


Once Upon a Yuletide

by Anonymississippi



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Hallmark Christmas Movie AU, Handywoman!Danny, Lawstein AU, Royal!Carmilla, Supernatural AU - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 14:39:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 57,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5337827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Lawstein Hallmark Christmas Movie AU I saw someone on tumblr request.</p><p>The Princess of Montsaurai, Carmilla Karnstein, just wants an hour to herself this holiday season. But Lilita has other plans, jam-packing Carmilla's royal visit to the Styrian capital of Graz with enough holiday appearances to cause sufficient distraction while she kidnaps an unknown innocent for the sacrifice back in Montsaurai.</p><p>But Carmilla wants none of it, and slips away from Lilita and her security detail, determined to find the traveling photography exhibit she's been dying to see. After a run-in with some pick-pocketing scumbags, Carmilla finds herself turned around in a strange city. Cue Danny Lawrence, handy-woman extraordinaire, to help bring Carmilla that long awaited Yuletide happiness. </p><p>Will Carmilla's royally large vampiric secret allow her to experience the magic of the Yule season? Or will it stand in the way of love, the greatest magic of all?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some thoughts:
> 
> Carmilla, of course, is probably going to be quite OOC in this AU. It's an AU. I suppose there's wiggle-room. But even more so, because snark of Carmilla's caliber would probably break the poor censors of Hallmark. The stubbornness is still there, as is some of the background angst; but doled out in appropriate doses for something that might play on Hallmark. 
> 
> This is still, however, within the Carmilla universe, with references to Silas and Styria. I'm playing with lots of pagan Germanic folklore, as well as reading a lot about the geography of Austria, all the while living an ocean away. Grant me a little lee-way and creative wiggle-room if I botch some cultural references.
> 
> This follows, with minor supernatural deviations, the plot of the Hallmark Channel's Once Upon a Holiday. Montsurai is the named fictional kingdom in that movie, so I used that. However, they meet in New York in the movie, which I swapped to Graz. 
> 
> I wanted to wait until I had a substantial bit of this typed up before publishing the first chapter (I'm at 15k currently). With the holidays coming at break-neck speed, I'll *fingers crossed* be able to have it completed by Christmas. Don't expect pages of character development. It's a Hallmark AU. The cheese and fluff is going to be so thick you won't be able to breathe for all of the dairy.
> 
> In other words, I hope it brightens your holidays or winter break. Happy reading.

“Come, my ‘Calla. The portraitist will be here any moment!”

“Papa!” Mircalla giggled, fidgeting and wiggling away from her father’s tickling fingers.

Her governess always chided her so severely for tangling the ribbons and snagging the stays in her gowns; little did the old bat know it was her very Papa that caused her to twist and kick so!

The seven-year-old Styrian Countess darted behind a heavy burgundy curtain, dodging her father’s teasing hands as he batted gently at the gathered waves of fabric. Her laugh was low, even as a child, due to a voracious case of whooping cough that had nearly taken her as an infant. The village physician had insisted her vocal chords weren’t harmed, merely strained; though any feminine, canary warbling would likely be out of the poor girl’s range (her father called her singing voice angelic—what would a common village healer know of singing?). The rooms in the Styrian schloss were consequently kept very warm, a fire for every hearth even if no one was sitting in the room. The Count did not dare risk another bout of illness in his only daughter.

Especially after her mother… well, Mircalla did not like to think on sad things near Yuletide.

“Papa, look!” Mircalla cried, pointing out the window.

Her father gathered her up in his strong grip, allowing her to press her face inquisitively against the cold glass. Her breath fogged up the pane, so she used her lacey cuff to wipe away the smudges. If only her governess could see her now!

“They’re bringing in the trees!” she said gleefully.

Below in the valley, she could see the gas lanterns hanging off the iron rods attached to the villager’s sleighs. Those traveling on foot carried torches in the snowy twilight; children swatted at each other with fir branches; and waiting women flung open their doors as their husbands and elder sons untied the ropes and released their carefully chosen trees.

“Even from this far away, I know that our tree is much grander, Papa.”

“Not everyone can live in a castle, dearest. But you shouldn’t begrudge them their trees, just because they are smaller. I didn’t grow up with Christmas trees during the season.”

“Why ever not?!” Mircalla returned, scandalized.

“Let’s just say your grandfather was much too invested in that old bastard Cromwell out of England during my youth.”

“Papa!” Mircalla cried.

“Oh, my apologies dearest.”

And to his credit, Mircalla believed her father looked appropriately abashed.

“Come. We can’t keep the portraitist waiting much longer.”

She skipped with her father down the hallways of the partly-illumined castle; this was indeed her favorite time of day—her favorite time of year! The servants were always shuffling about in the back staircases; she imagined great terrors lurked there, though she knew, of course, it was naught but Gerda and Danka, likely squibbling over tomorrow’s luncheon menu. But the bite of snow whistled through tiny window cracks; an occasional wolf would howl from the wood on the eastern corner of the estate; and shadows of malevolent design, gnarled and twisted as subterranean demons, would crawl over the floors in her bedroom and inspire fantastic dreams, nightmarish and exhilarating.

But the mistletoe, the pinecones, the scents of cinnamon and cloves, heightened the thrill of the Yule season, beat back at the awful phantasms she conjured so frequently in her mind. All of her imagining galvanized an interest in the strangest imagery—she was beaten severely by her governess for paging through a forbidden tome in her father’s library, with fantastic depictions of monsters and pagans, reds and crimsons and carmines and maroons shooting from different parts of humans…

It was quite later in life that Mircalla understood the blood.

When her mother had coughed and the red exploded from her throat.

The images were grotesque, the phantasms truly horrid, but the colors, the shapes, the pictures…

There was beauty in elements of the terror, just as there was comfort in the pagan traditions of Yuletide. Perhaps that was why she found the season so intriguing. There weren’t many seasonal paintings in the castle, but she often found herself standing before the ones displayed for hours on end, studying, surveying, observing the lighting and colored gradation from one brush stroke to the next. She especially liked the wintry scenes, wondered if there was magic and enchantment woven into the fabric or painted upon the canvas.

Mircalla and her father turned the corner as Franz led what looked to be a large square frame with skirts into the sitting room. Clipping at her father’s heels, Mircalla was suddenly struck with a strain of shyness, knowing a stranger had been led into the intimacy of their sitting room.

It was not often that they received visitors; her father usually went away for social engagements. She knew, even so young, that it was depressing to come to a household still haunted by the misfortune of its mistress’s untimely death. Though her father wore widowhood well, Mircalla knew the young Count would spare her the longing looks from unmarried nobles’ daughters if he ever hosted a ball. What woman, other than her dearly departed Mamam, would consent to living out her days in such solitude? Mircalla much preferred the sanctity of their remoteness, overlooking the valley, without intrusion from the rest of high society. Her books and her paintings, her father and even sometimes her governess… she could do without too much outside interference.

“It turned out even better than I imagined!” a voice said to Franz. “Though of course, you’ll want to commission a frame for display.”

“May I present his lordship, Count Mathias Oskar Nicholi Karnstein, and his daughter, the Lady Mircalla,” Franz announced.

The bundle of skirts turned as Mircalla ducked behind her father, clutching at his trouser leg.

“Now, now, _dragoste,_ suddenly so timid?” her father untwined her fingers from his garments and ambled forward to their guest, taking her hand with such gentlemanly grace Mircalla seemed wary. Her father’s attitude and manner changed, minutely though it may be, on the exceedingly rare occasion they did host outsiders.

“Well, we won’t waste time on pleasantries, my good Count,” the woman said, blocked now by Franz and her father.

“Mircalla,” her father called. “Do come see.”

Mircalla stepped out from behind the settee and glanced upwards into the face of the most beautiful woman she had ever seen; even more beautiful, perhaps, than her Maman.

The stranger had eyes the color of pine trees in winter time; starkly verdant with a glint of silver sparkling in her iris. She wore her color high in her cheeks, a bronzey sheen, so that her cheekbones arched and the flesh below hollowed pleasantly. Knots of mahogany hair were twisted into a tight chignon at the base of her neck; her rich brocade sported emerald and sapphire tones, tiny gold threads winking in the firelight. She wore ermine about her shoulders, and a cameo broach with a stately fir tree pinned above her left breast. Fabric whooshed about as Mircalla stared and the woman proceeded to showcase the reason for her visit.

Before her, on a canvas stretched in a crude wooden frame, was the likeness of Mircalla’s departed mother, painted with such exactitude it was as if the woman could lean off the page and caress her father’s cheek.

“Oh, Dominika,” Mircalla heard her father whisper. “It is exquisite.”

“So you are pleased, my lord?” the woman curtseyed beatifically.

“Mircalla,” her father called again, so she inched her way closer to the congregation in the sitting room.

The portrait was everything; everything her mother had once been, and everything she one day hoped to be as an artist. If only her father would consent to proper lessons, perhaps with this woman… she could learn so much from her.

“You painted this?” Mircalla dared to inquire.

“Yes,” the woman returned.

“It is the queerest work I’ve seen,” Mircalla answered, for she so wanted to reach out and touch it.

“How so?” the woman asked.

“It is so real. So… true,” Mircalla answered. “It is hard for artists to capture a likeness so acutely. For these are just copies of something that was once real. But this is… it is like you captured a realness. A truth. I wish to do that one day.”

“Your daughter flatters me immensely, my lord,” Dominicka returned.

“She is interested in images,” the Count said. “She stares at the few portraits we have so intensely. I wonder that she would injure her eyesight.”

“There is nothing wrong with appreciating beauty, my lord,” Dominicka said.

“It is easy to believe that a woman so beautiful painted something so perfect,” Mircalla turned her attention from the portrait to its artist, and only just kept from flinging herself about the woman’s slim waist. “If I was of age I would marry you, and we would spend all our days painting.”

“M-m-my Lady!” Franz stuttered.

“Mircalla!”

“My lord, don’t fret so,” Dominicka told her father. And though Mircalla was young, and perhaps more precocious and naïve than she cared to think herself, she distinctly remembered Dominicka’s next words: “She is only a child. She doesn’t have the sense to understand such implications.”

Dominicka slowly settled herself upon a lounge, and beckoned Mircalla nearer.

“My darling girl,” the woman said, opening her arms to Mircalla. “Come, let me tell you my secret to imagery.”

She took the woman’s hands, which were not smooth as her own. Mircalla felt the calluses on the knuckles of her fingers, noted one small fleck of orange atop the nail of her pinky that made her recall sunrises. They were not the hands of a lady, but Mircalla didn’t care. Dominicka ducked down near her ear and squeezed her hands earnestly.

“I practice quite often,” she said, smiling serenely. “And I study other people’s work. I study very, very much. Sometimes even when I would rather be doing other things; like attending balls, or hosting great dinners. But it allows me to hone my skill. Maybe one day, perhaps when you are a bit older,” the woman tapped Mircalla on the nose with her finger, then leaned into her ear, whispering, hers and Mircalla’s special secret: “You may come to my house and paint all day. And if your proposal still stands, we’ll have a magnificent ceremony.”

Mircalla gaped at her, hopeful and childish and too far entranced with the woman’s promise to think beyond their holding hands, in this very moment.

“You and I shall paint to your heart’s content,” Dominicka said, for the benefit of the room.

Mircalla received brushes and oil paints that year on Christmas day, but Dominicka never did make good on any of her promises.

And Mircalla…

She suffered an early death, very much like her mother. And, like no one else in her line, an abhorrent, sinister, woeful afterlife. Her Christmases after 1698 were… well, it was no longer her favorite time of year.


	2. Chapter One

“Darling, the peasant presses will work themselves into an agitated cyclone of scandal if you don’t attend the holiday events. It’s your sister’s off-year—which she’s chosen to spend gallivanting about in her favorite Moroccan port—so please, for once, put on a, ehm, _pleasant_ face, and do as you’re told.”

It was always rather impossible to argue with mother around Yuletide.

“I know it would be too much to ask you to be _charming_ ,” the woman in the pantsuit continued, haughty and snide.

“I get it, Mother,” Carmilla bit back, staring out of the tinted windows of their black limousine.

The embassy’s vehicle glided by looming brick buildings bedecked in garlands and fairy lights, the tiny flags denoting their royal status prompting head-turning and ‘Oh!’-ing upon recognition. It wasn’t everyday a foreign royal family paid a quaint European city a visit come the Christmas season. Even less common that said royal family consisted almost exclusively of vampires.

“And I’m sure my pleasantness doesn’t correlate to how many women you’ll need for your annual ritual, does it?”

“Mircalla,” Lilita sighed, her patience as weathered as the snow-covered cobblestones rolling beneath their tires. “You know as well as I that a single young woman gone missing at Christmas will hardly ripple the waters. I don’t believe your sacrifice of four days at catered events between here and Vienna compares to the luxuries of an immortal life of royalty, now, do you?”

“Why can’t William be here?” Carmilla complained again.

“He’s at the palace in Montsaurai, fulfilling his duties without giving me a headache.”

“And no doubt providing _The Mirror_ enough fodder to save the print industry from extinction. I’d hardly call his debauched exploits newsworthy.”

“Everyone loves a bad boy, dear,” Lilita pet her jaw patronizingly, and it took everything in Carmilla not to flinch and turn away.

“I just hate not getting a moment to myself on these tours,” Carmilla muttered.

“Would you rather us skip the sacrifice, and allow the Deep One to devour your own people?” Lilita snapped. “Because you’re being extremely selfish if that is the case, Mircalla.”

The Crown Princess of Montsaurai fiddled with the aperture wheel on her camera. Carmilla had scavenged for, okay, _stolen_ this particular piece of hardware, wrestled it away from some prick in a dark alley in Calais forty years ago. Since then, her albums had grown, her work evolved, but attending the multi-artist exhibition at Styria’s international gallery could only improve her technique. She’d never be bold enough to ask mother for funds to return to University for something as “common” as a photography degree, but would it be too much for Lilita to release her, just for a single Yuletide season? To allow her some—well, she had hardly come close to a sentiment as saccharine as _peace_ since her turning, but—ease, or, enjoyment during the holidays? An hour at a photography gallery, without the changelings looking over her shoulder?

Especially here, in Styria… considering she’d not returned to her homeland since her change.

It was, like so many other things, too much to ask from mother. Lilita always had tunnel vision this time of year anyway, because of that whole Lophilliformes-requires-innocent-blood thing.

“I don’t understand why William and Mattie get off years,” Carmilla placed her camera down in her lap, hoping not to anger mother further with her nervous twitching. She grappled at the anchor amulet dangling from her neck and held it tightly in her fist, pressing the flesh of her thumb against its pointy tips to distract herself. “If I’m not on tour, I’m back at the castle playing perfect princess to the citizens. So why do they get special treatment?”

Lilita turned her critical, ancient eyes of fire on her, which signaled the impending end to the conversation.

“Because I know they are less inclined to run away. No one betrays this family. Especially not strains of true royalty.”

The car pulled up to the shelter where Lilita had arranged their first photo op: Styrian children were scheduled to greet the crown princess of Montsurai and her "aunt," Lilita, the Duchess of Gardahnlia. Carmilla and this country’s version of Father Christmas would divvy out boxed Christmas meals to poor families while children showered her with affection and winter bouquets; and all the while, introverted, anxious, aloof Carmilla, would play pretty pretty princess for the cameras, and smile, and smile, and smile…

Or else incur another half century of mother’s punishment, entombed and at the mercy of an unshakable wrath.

 

* * *

 

 

The hotel, like every other five-star establishment in every other major European city, was pristine. Bellboys descended upon them like a murder of crows, pecking at their scarves and hats and cloaks until they were all stripped to their innermost layers. Carmilla was speedily stripped down to a favored black sweater worn to patches that her mother detested to no end.

(“I’ll be in your designer pea coat for the duration of the public appearance, Mother. You can’t even see the sweater.”

At which Duchess Lilita had sighed, picking her battles for the sake of the festive war.)

Carmilla bolted upstairs as soon as one of her mother’s cronies had handed over the keycard, withdrawing her shabby, paperback copy of Barthes’s _Camera Lucida_ from the back pocket of her designer skinny jeans. She wanted nothing more than to lose herself in the depression of captured histories, knowing the next few days would be filled with mother’s inane minutiae. All for some dumb distraction, just to take some poor soul off the streets of a distant city and feed a monster back home. It would be so much easier if Mother would just return to the old ways, cultivating new servants before the holiday season and then nudging them into the palace’s boiler room.

It required much less effort on all their parts; though mother claimed that servants began getting “suspicious” and “skeptical” over the last two centuries, due to the immediate hires and then abrupt disappearances. She lectured incessantly about the rise of surveillance culture, how it was growing evermore difficult to garner a proper sacrifice without a good distraction:

Cue the royal holiday tours, and the massive Yuletide celebration at home. She had William and Carmilla, and occasionally Mattie, hop from country to country during the holiday season, with no real pattern; though someone usually turned up missing (a loner, few ties and little family who might’ve just disappeared after a depressing Christmas season) after the Montsaurai royal family made their appearance. Hence the need for happier stories in papers around the Yule season—add a foreign royal princess to a homeless shelter near Christmas and no one bats an eye if a Jane Doe winds up gone; one sadness amidst a week’s worth of charitable royal novelties would go unnoted and disregarded by the general public, as well as any suspicious palace servants who paid too much attention to international papers.

Really mother?

Seems the cloaking spell Lilita had placed on the populace back in Montsaurai worked well enough to conceal the royal family’s static ages, but didn’t cloud their grey matter enough to recognize disappearances in the surrounding countries, or even on the royal palace staff.

Another reason why Carmilla wanted to get as far away from magic as she could: it made absolutely zero sense to her.

She waved the card in front of the key reader and stalked into the suite, bypassing the regal furnishings and heading for the first comfy surface she saw. It was so late, nearly one p.m., and she’d yet to sleep due to her mother’s relentless travel schedule. Simon would likely be in soon to run over the itinerary for the next week, and then, the return flight to Montsaurai.

Oh joy.

On the gilded coffee table lay a spread of Styrian magazines, a smattering of other Eastern European periodicals cluttering the surface. On the far end was a brochure for a traveling photography exhibit featuring prominent theorists, works by Sontag, Robert Capa, Lange, Adams, and Brassaii, as well as original manuscripts and annotations from Walter Benjamin’s early drafts of his image critique during the mechanical age. It was a veritable playground for Carmilla, only a mile or so away, if memory served her correctly; and yet, still, after all these years, she was slave to her (not truly her) country, slave to her schedule, and slave to her mistress.

“Your highness?” An inquisitive knock, a formal address, and a long-suffering sigh.

“And so it begins,” Carmilla huffed, allowing the assistant entrance for the week’s event rundown.

Carmilla was 100% positive that Middleton chick did not have to put up with half of this crap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So muuuuuuuuuuuuuch exposition.


	3. Chapter 2

“Danny! Are you nearly finished with that doorframe?”

“I told you ten minutes ago, Chuck. The more you talk, the more time it takes.”

Danny holstered the Philips head into her tool belt and gripped the edge of the open shop door, pulling the panel up and down to see if the hinges remained tight after her mini-renovation. Snow billowed at her boots and swooped onto the WELCOME mat of the shop, a wintry deposit of capricious Alpine weather asserting itself against a door propped ajar.

“But since you’re asking, I think you’re all set,” Danny finished, closing the door to prevent any more snow infiltration.

The last thing Chuck needed was a lawsuit from a holiday-crazed shopper, or anybody uncoordinated enough to slip and break something important without a posted slippery-when-wet sign.

Standing in the open doorway for the past quarter hour had numbed her fingers of all sensation. The snow had already been sticking for a good two weeks, the Styrian winter temperatures holding at consistent degrees below freezing, not counting the windchill. She could hardly grip the handle of her toolbox to move it out of the entrance of the shop.

“Here,” Chuck said, “Allow me.”

The old man took her pale, frigid hands in his knobbly, nutty brown ones and brought them up to his bearded face. He cupped them gently, and blew his candied breath that always smelled of spruce and tobacco into a space between his fingers. Danny’s hands flushed with feeling, as if each finger was a wick suddenly set ablaze, five little candles flickering off of her palms.

“What was that?” Danny asked, flexing her joints with no lingering chill whatsoever.

“Magic, of course,” Chuck winked, and placed a knowing index finger up against his nose.

“Just because you run a second-hand magic shop—”

“Second-hand, first-rate!” Chuck corrected, straightening a dusty sign from one of his merchandise shelves.

Rows of loaded card decks and flash powders were practically leaping off the shelves (close-up magic apparently making a comeback this season, according to Chuck). Danny heard the _ring_ of the till in the background, shuffling sideways through the aisles of the (thankfully) busy shop.

“Doesn’t mean you can do _real_ magic, Chuck,” Danny objected, no matter the history of Styria and its surroundings. “You’ll have to let me in on your little body-warming secret, though. That could come… in _handy_.”

Chuck _huh-hoed!_ and rolled his eyes joyously. He thumped her hard over her back, undoing a scraggly braid that had withstood most of the jobs during her workday. Her flannel had sustained only minimal damage during the restorations, a couple of splinter snags from sanding that butcher-block and paint splotches from the first coat on the kitchen cabinets, but nothing she couldn’t work out with some thinner and detergent. Danny rubbed her eyes and retreated to the back office with Chuck as a grinning kid ran past with a series of metal rings and colorful scarves.

“Coffee?” the old magician asked.

“Always,” Danny returned.

“It’s nearly five, are you sure you don’t want decaf?”

“Burning the midnight oil on another project,” Danny explained. “All these people want their properties move-in ready by the time they’re back from the winter holidays. What’s a handywoman to do?”

“Which I take it means that you’ll be working all week, instead of enjoying the Christmas season like you need to be doing,” Chuck admonished her. “Tsk, tsk, Danny.”

“I’ve got that thing at the courthouse on Christmas Eve,” Danny argued. “By the way, are you and Asha still planning on coming? I know it throws a wrench in your usual Christmas Eve plans, but—”

“Of course we’re coming!” Chuck exclaimed, offended at the notion that he might _not_ come. He grinned his bright smile as he dumped grounds into the filter and set it to brew: “But what I want to know is: who are you taking as your plus one?”

“Chuck…” Danny groaned as she tucked some flyaway hairs behind her ear, preparing for the well-meaning meddling.

The old man’s eye twinkled with conspiracy, as if he would pluck a date right out of the depths of the Styrian wilderness if Danny didn’t do it herself.

“Come on, Danny,” he needled.

“Look, I didn’t have time to think about getting a proper date for this,” she said. Because in all honesty, her work schedule had been crazy. And dating seemed like more effort than she could expend, between all her handywoman jobs and her extracurricular supernatural activities. But she soldiered on, knowing her adoptive grandfather-figure wouldn’t cease without an answer: “Laura’s already said she’d love to be there—”

“You can’t take your foster-sister as your plus one to a Christmas Eve engagement!”

Danny wanted to rear back and say _watch me!_ , but since he was providing her with ambrosia in the form of liquid caffeine, she let him slide.

“I’d hardly call a work-thing an _engagement_ ,” she argued petulantly.

“Besides, I’m not talking about for your work. You’re not going to have a good time at that dinner unless you bring someone you like,” Chuck plowed ahead, disregarding her objections. “I’m talking about having a good time for yourself, around people that make you happy, Danielle.”

“I told you, I’m having dinner with Laura tomorrow night! I can do family affairs when I have to.”

“You have dinner with your sister twice a week. That’s hardly getting into the spirit of things!”

To accentuate his point, Chuck thrust a candy cane into her mug without asking if she wanted one. She didn’t particularly mind, since peppermint was one of her secret Christmas indulgences. Chuck poured a cup and passed the steaming mug over to her, then took a seat beside her at the break table in the tackily-decorated all-purpose room. Asha and Chuck’s stockings were hanging from cabinet handles over the sink, and a half-eaten Gingerbread house stood vigil on the corner of the desk, powdered sugar and gum drop candies staining the business ledger.

“Yuletide is such a magical time of year!” Chuck reiterated.

“Says the retired magician,” Danny smirked, sipping carefully at her black coffee. The twang of peppermint sent a shock to her system, warming her cheeks. “You might be a little biased.”

Chuck made room at his own space, awash with fake beards and red felt. Green and silver tinsel overran the area like some sort of crafty golem, awaiting Chuck’s _abracadabra_ before springing to life and strangling Danny to death with its choke-hazardous cheer.

“You know we only want the best for you up here,” Chuck said soberly, that kindly concern evident in his deep espresso eyes. “Asha and I want to see you happy again. I know you miss the rest of your foster-family, even if you don’t say so; and I can only thank the spirits that Laura decided to attend Silas so she’d be closer to you, but Danny, you need someone for yourself. It’s been a long time since Gretchen—”

“Chuck.”

It was Danny’s turn to reach out warm hands this time; to close them over the worried, fidgeting fingers at the table across from her. He’d been so good to her when she’d decided to stay and make her life here, but all the prying… well, she was doing fine just how she was. No reason to dive headfirst into a fling just because she was a little bit lonely.

“I appreciate your concern, really,” Danny said, hoping he’d catch the sincerity in her tone. “It’s not that I… Timing’s just been an issue. All these projects around the holidays, and Christmas is hardly the season to be jumping into a new relationship.”

“Danny, you really need to get back in the game.”

“I don’t like the game. I’m fine on the sidelines for now,” she challenged once more, taking another deep swig of her coffee. “Look, I’m not _opposed_ to finding someone—”

“So you’ll come to the Christmas Costume party tomorrow night!”

“What?”

“The Christmas party!” Chuck said. “You know most of my friends, you’ve been coming since your freshman year—”

“And running into my Stats professor, dressed like _that_ ,” Danny shuddered at the memory. “It was illuminating,” she grinned again, wrapping both hands around her mug before tipping it against her lips. “Wait a sec, what does coming to your Christmas thing have to do with me ‘finding’ somebody?” she asked skeptically, airquoting a portion of her sentence to show just how thrilled she was at the suggestion.

“Oh, look at that!” Chuck said, reaching behind Danny’s head.

“What is it?” Danny turned, cursing herself a nanosecond later for falling for it.

“You’ve got something in your ear!” Chuck returned, displaying a bright chocolate coin, wrapped in golden tin foil.

“Chocolate won’t get me off topic,” Danny said, unwrapping the treat and popping it into her mouth. “I know when you pull out the ‘what’s behind your ear’ gag you’re trying to distract me. So go ahead, spill.”

“Don’t be mad…”

“See, I hate it when people preface things that way.”

“I had hoped you’d at least stop by the party, since you usually make an appearance anyway—”

“Chuck—”

“Any my grand-niece is just as sweet as she can be! She’s finishing up her degree this May, I’m sure you two would hit it off just fine.”

“I don’t do well with blind-dates,” Danny groaned, facepalming atop the table. “Is there any way, any way at all, that you can un-invite her without sounding rude?”

“Danny—”

“It’s just a lot of pressure. It’d almost have been better if I hadn’t known she was going to show,” Danny explained, staring pointedly into the remains of her coffee. The tip of her Candy-Cane had dissolved to a point; she wondered if death-by-peppermint stake was the only way to vanquish the Ghost of Interminable Christmas Nagging.

“Fine, fine, no grand-nieces. And I’ll keep that in mind for next time I make a set-up attempt,” Chuck said, finishing off his own mug, tiny reindeer trotting along the rim. He rose and took his and Danny’s mugs to the sink.

“I should run,” Danny said, stooping to retrieve her toolbox. “Since I’ll be back tomorrow, I’m gonna check those fuses in the back and give that door another look, but it should be good to go.”

“I’ve no doubt it is,” Chuck said, content, surveying Danny from his perch across the room. “Danny?”

“Yeah?” she said, pausing at the doorway that led to the front of the shop.

“Don’t kill the magic by overworking yourself, okay? It can be quite beautiful, if you only take the time to see it.”

Danny tapped at the doorframe, wondering, not for the first time, if Chuck had a sixth sense about certain things.

“I’ll catch you tomorrow,” she said, and then headed off to get a few hours of shut eye before challenging the Styrian night, intent on decimating every bit of magic that crossed her path.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loving the love for this so far. We finally get to our second character, so the meeting is close! Included is a version of an OC I've worked on from a previous Lawstein series, but modified significantly to fit Hallmark's "necessary secondary character" mold. 
> 
> Would love any feedback you guys care to provide! And also, Happy Hanukkah to those starting their celebration tomorrow!


	4. Chapter 4

Carmilla woke in pitch blackness, the early morning and labor of travel taking its toll on her start. She’d made the plan, after studying that brochure on the hotel coffee table.

A photographed portrait of the descendant of an ancient Austrian noble had stared at her with accusing eyes, daring her to come and learn the fate of the royal line; she’d made up her mind then and there. She was going to get to that exhibit no matter the cost, schedule (and herself) be damned. If two days of freedom around Yuletide constituted another quarter century underground, then she was damn sure going to make the most of it.

She knew herself, and she knew that her mother knew her as well; and the pair of them recognized Carmilla’s penchant for late mornings and even later nights. It would be ages before anyone dared summon her to mother’s side for her daily rundown. Besides, she’d taken mental notes, and her first public appearance wasn’t scheduled until eleven a.m. anyway.

Carmilla placed her amulet around her neck and grabbed a small bag, a cleverly disguised juice box filled with blood, her film camera, then tucked the Barthes selection back into her pants and grabbed her mobile. Carmilla poked her head past the door frame, noting the two changelings on security detail marching back and forth at the end of the hall.

Right in front of the elevator.

Swearing under her breath, Carmilla assessed her options: she’d outrun the changelings in the palace before, but that would alert them to her disappearance straight away, which would send mother into a blood-thirsty tizzy. She could cold-cock them, but they’d still rouse within the hour. Their constitutions were alarmingly robust, even for supernatural guards, so they’d have no trouble returning to consciousness and setting off some sort of alarm. Her best option, though she almost wished for the thrill of knocking heads, would certainly be stealth.

As she mulled over calling the desk for a hotel map to locate the staircase (again, another tip off as to her intentions, if security did their job and questioned everyone), her sensitive hearing registered the subdued _ding_ of the service elevator all the way down the hall.

_Perfect_.

And with her super-speed, it would be nothing to dash around the corner and swipe the cleaning staff’s all-access card.

Decided, Carmilla twisted the handle and flew from the suite with supernatural speed, yanking so quickly at the maid’s key card the woman barely noticed the tug; Carmilla was about to press the button and call the elevator when she stopped, distracted by the rumbling in her stomach. The juice box would get her through the next day or so, but if she was going to be running from any of mother’s security hellions, she might as well feed while she could.

She snatched the body of the cleaning staff from around the corner, out of range of the CCTV. Carmilla conked the middle-aged woman on the head, extended her fangs, and drank her fill. The woman would wake woozy and violated, drained of two pints of her life’s blood, but all in all, Carmilla didn’t care to stain the carpet and leave a trail of dripping evidence following her down to the staff kitchens. Carmilla dropped the key card on the carpet before her on the hall floor as the doors slid shut, and she rode, smirking all the while, to the bottom-most floor of the hotel.

 

* * *

 

 

Stepping into the kitchens, Carmilla was genuinely surprised by the hustle happening at such an early hour. She camped out in the massive linen closet turned washroom for a moment, assessing the situation. Surely there would be a back door, so that the miscreant sous chefs could run all the waste out to the dumpsters?

Stalking around the corner, she caught her hip on the side of a plastic table, ducking down and shoving a fist in her mouth to keep from swearing loud enough for the entire ground floor to hear. Not exactly princess-like. Crouched out of sight from the running cooks and bellboys and their early breakfast room service calls, Carmilla took stock of the collapsible table she’d just rammed into. A haphazard paper sign reading _Donations_ had been scotch-taped to the front; boxes of old clothing and canned goods overran the table, which got Carmilla thinking…

She hoisted herself up and found a tattered, long grey coat and a loose, red knitted cap. Technically it wasn’t stealing; the people were just donating to her cause. Carmilla could always drop off a sapphire from the royal treasury to make up for the trade after she’d gotten her fair use out of the pieces. As she rearranged herself back in the linen closet, her phone went off, buzzing her detailed to-do list in her calendar application. Damn her mother’s PA for syncing their schedules on Google calendar, the location services popping up the first address for her speech—

Wait. Location services.

“Huh,” Carmilla thought, smiling down at the lit screen, irritating and noxious with its hour-by-hour itinerary.

She might have been subterranean for a fair bit of the industrial revolution, but she did recall the tracking setting the palace guard placed on the royal family’s smart phones.

“Fair trade,” she hummed delightedly, and tossed the phone into the donations box as she sauntered around the corner and out the back kitchen door of the hotel, the kitchen staff none the wiser due to her vampiric glimmer.

 

* * *

 

It was about an hour after daybreak when Danny emerged from the cramped house, covered in cobwebs and chilled from her sopping clothing. But her back and arms ached pleasantly from usefulness, and she felt she’d gotten a reasonably good head start on what was certainly going to be a busy day. She holstered the smooth whittled stake into her work belt and grabbed her toolbox, happy to have another property on her list purged. Thankfully, this house had only been infested with a swarm of _klaboutermannikins_ , which explained the leaky roof and busted pipes. It had taken her several hours to rid the place of the nests, dousing the primrose infusion she’d concocted with her spray bottle and boarding up the leaky spots with iron nails. Primrose and iron, being known faerie repellents, brought the mischievous water sprites into her dim work light.

“Look little dudes, I’m not hear to hurt you,” Danny warned, squirting at a rogue pixie that had latched onto her earlobe. “But there’s some really nice people who want to live here, and it’s my job to get the place up to snuff.”

They weren’t malevolent spirits, which made Danny feel a slight bit of pity for them. She’d found the records for the house, purchased by a pair of bachelor sailors in the forties and abandoned after their deaths in the early nineties. That explained the water spirits, and the old sea relics and beautiful bottled ships left to decay in corners of the condemned property. It was sad, those men’s possessions left to waste away, acknowledged only by the withering fae who inhabited them. It made Danny wonder about any children, and whether they wanted to keep some of their father’s or uncle’s possessions.

Then again, a pair of single men, living together all the while… perhaps there was a reason they didn’t have children, a reason they didn’t have anyone to will their possessions to, other than each other.

Good for them, of course, being able to live out fifty years together. But it saddened Danny, too, thinking about the men and women who could be together but not… quite… together, not a recognized family. There weren’t ways to… to be out and happy back then.

Danny huffed, lugging the large carved figurehead that had once been nailed to the front of a smaller skiff. During her descent of the front steps, her breaths puffed in frosty clouds; she lay the piece gently in the back of her van, intent on sanding, staining, and returning it to its former glory. She threw a drop cloth over it and shut the back doors, thinking all the while of her favorite coffee and bagel stop in Hauptplatz, the city’s main square. The house with the pixie infestation was but three blocks into midtown and, since she was so close, it wouldn’t be too far of a drive into the city centre to treat herself to a cinnamon sugar bagel with a dollop of fresh butter (and an Americano the size of her forearm).

It was nearly Christmas, after all.

She maneuvered through nine a.m. holiday traffic easily, and found a parking spot large enough to accommodate her construction van, _Lawrence Restoration_ painted in stylized letters on the sliding door. Shirking her saturated flannel for a dryer wool pullover, Danny threaded a fuzzy navy scarf about her neck as she exited the van, bopping merrily along despite her early work hour. She’d only been awake wrestling the water sprites into submission since five, but hadn’t sipped on any coffee in the meanwhile—the true travesty of the morning.

Danny placed an order and sat in a cozy, overstuffed chair near the radiator, munching absentmindedly on her bagel. She wondered if she should pick up something for dinner with Laura later that evening. Her foster sister had gotten better in her culinary pursuits (no more cookies for appetizers), but Danny didn’t really trust the journalism undergraduate to fix a feast on a student budget. Laura tried, bless her, but nine times out of ten the tiny vlogger threw her hands up and just made a really good pack of Ramen.

Danny couldn’t fault her. She had subsisted on Ramen, eggs, and the occasional half price vegetable from the farmer’s market while she was still in school. Plus, having Laura on this side of the Atlantic made up for the awful cooking. It would be… not grim, but significantly less bright when Laura headed back to North America for grad school.

Danny shook her head, determined not to spoil her cheerful mood this early in the day. She tossed the bagel wrapper in the bin on her way out, saluting the barista in the Santa hat behind the bar at her exit.

Leaning on the second floor railing outside, Danny surveyed the skyline of Styria’s capital city. Graz was a sprawling mega-municipality of red roofs and stone buildings situated amidst hillsides, the Mur river bubbling briskly through the walkable main district. It was urban by necessity, European to the extreme, with steeples and flatboats and statues and clock towers so picturesque Danny wondered why Hallmark even bothered with words on their greeting cards; just send out a couple of winter shots of Graz and any card recipient would be suffused with Christmas joy. Living on the northwest edge of the city put her within spitting distance of Laura in Leoben, the sleepy town with the creepy university Laura had followed Danny to three years back. And now, with Laura about to begin her final semester, and Danny’s business finally taking off, she couldn’t seem to shake the thought that future Christmases might not feel the same. Just when she was getting into some sort of routine, her world would be uprooted once more.

Danny caught sight of a tourist party, decked out with fanny packs and cheap sunglasses, getting their picture taken by a local in front of Archduke Johann’s fountain. To their left, another man had stopped a woman—not local, given her hesitant reaction and vacant stare—and asked her to do the same.

The dark-headed woman with the slouchy red knit cap seemed to be brushing him off, walking forward with her own camera, but the man was adamant. She paused, obviously annoyed, and placed her belongings down on a bench so she could take the man’s camera.

A tourist, traveling alone, approaching another tourist, unfamiliar with the area…

Danny decided something felt off. Nothing like any of the properties she purged, nothing supernatural, just—wrong. Danny made her way down the deck, keeping her eye on the impromptu photo op all the while.

Just when Danny was about to cross the street, the culprit struck, a second man in a grey hoodie snagging the woman’s bag and camera and darting around a corner, sneaking off of the main square.

“Hey!” Danny hollered, causing the first con to stop his ridiculous posing in front of the fountain.

He moved toward the woman taking his picture to retrieve his camera, which spurred Danny into a dash across the street. She leapt over a concrete planter and sprinted toward the walkway, but the bus that nearly flattened her like road pancake had other ideas concerning her urgency. Danny skidded to a stop and let the honking bus pass, only to fly by the woman in the red hat and around the corner, attempting to head off the two thieves. By the time she turned off the pedestrian square and onto the heavily trafficked main road, she only just caught a glimpse of a dark parka, ducking down a side street and likely heading off to the shopping district. Maybe if she could get the woman to place a hold on her credit cards, they’d still have a chance at catching the douchebags.

Danny jogged back around the corner, the stitch in her side and the caffeine in her veins giving her a better jolt than any early morning faerie-purging could.

“Hey, sorry, they got away,” Danny shouted, trotting across the square to where the woman was standing, gaze still fixed on the fountain.

“Hey,” Danny tried again, when the woman didn’t seem to pay her any attention. “Hey, did you hear me?”

“Pardon me?” the woman said lazily, turning to face Danny full-on for the first time.

And just… woah.

“Uh…” Danny drawled, because from that far away Danny had been more focused on the scumbags who’d made off with the girl’s things, not porcelain skin and almond eyes and lips red as blood, a jaw line sharper than Danny’s own miter saw.

The woman stood, relaxed and seemingly unaffected, waiting for Danny to explain.

Which… she would, Danny thought, if she could only stop gaping like some star struck mute.

The woman’s hair curled effortlessly, smooth ebony against her oversized grey coat, and those three syllables, that _pardon me?_ , with just the barest hint of an Austrian accent, low and gravelly and burning like a hot toddy on a frozen December evening; the kind of night Danny snuggled cozily in a fire-warmed blanket of oranges and reds and yellows—Danny blinked against a mysterious haze settling over her brain, bewitched by the woman before her.

Was she really not a local? Had Danny completely misjudged the situation? She seemed too calm and unperturbed, considering scoundrels had just made off with her belongings, but Danny couldn’t put a finger on what made her seem so… strange.

“Can I help you? Or do you just plan to stand there gawking at me all day?”

“Sorry,” Danny said, shaking her head, ridding herself of the blurry cloud of distraction that had left her tongue-tied. “It’s just, those men? They got your bag.”

“What?” the woman asked, turning swiftly toward the bench.

Danny watched her shoulders deflate, but stood back, wary, wondering just how involved she wanted to get. The woman had already caught her staring, and the last thing she wanted was for a pretty—okay, _gorgeous_ lady to think she was some kind of creeper.

“My camera…” the woman lamented, stalking off toward the direction of the thieves.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“Where does it look like, Gingerbread?” the woman snapped back. “I’m going to get them.”

“What, are you going to chase them down?” Danny asked incredulously, giving the slim woman a skeptical appraisal.

The woman looked as if she were about to break into a run in cumbersome black combat boots, but Danny’s comment stopped her short. Though with the agitated look the woman shot her way, Danny wouldn’t have been surprised if she did in fact chase those men down all by her lonesome. She certainly seemed motivated with enough anger, even if her stature suggested she wasn’t 100% capable of tackling one, let alone both men to the pavement.

“Look, I got a pretty good look at those guys,” Danny said, which she thought was safe enough. “You can call the cops and they’ll send out a patrol. I can give a description. They’re probably still in the neighborhood.”

“Call the cops?” the woman asked, as if the idea were completely novel.

“Yeah, you know, the people paid to catch the bad guys?”

“I’d really rather not involve the authorities in this,” the woman said smoothly.

“But they took your stuff!”

The woman shrugged, still careless. If some thugs had stolen Danny’s bag, she’d sure as hell be doing her best to track down the thieves and get her stuff back. Sometimes bad situations forced your hand but… stealing was just _wrong_. She’d rather people that far down on their luck come and ask her for cash instead of just _taking_ it from her.

“Look, people are usually pretty nice here, but you need to watch out for scumbags like those. They try and take advantage of people’s generosity around Christmas.”

“Oh really?” the woman growled low, affronted. “I didn’t sign up for a lecture, and I didn’t ask you to chase them. If I really wanted that stuff back, I’d _have_ it back. Got it, Candy Cane?”

“Candy—? Hey, I’m just trying to help.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Says the woman who just got pick-pocketed without noticing,” Danny managed an eye roll instead of a scoff. “Here,” she continued, pulling her mobile from her pocket. “You can at least call and cancel your credit cards. Just Google the Visa number real quick. I’ve got plenty of data service.”

The woman stared quizzically at the phone, and then back at Danny, and, wow—Danny’d never get used to that look, or that flip-flopping feeling she got deep in her abdomen when those Hepburn eyes glanced her way.

Instead of prolonging Danny’s discomfort, the woman returned to the thread of the conversation.

“Credit cards?” she asked, seeming genuinely perplexed.

“Yeah, or else those guys are definitely gonna go to town on their own holiday spending spree,” Danny quipped. “With _your_ money.”

“I don’t have any credit cards,” she explained.

“What, seriously?” Danny asked, incredulous.

“Yes,” the woman smirked, somewhat patronizingly. “I’ve never had need of them.”

“Everyone has credit cards,” Danny argued.

“Everyone but me,” the woman shot back.

“Then do you want to call a cab?” Danny asked again, waving her still proffered phone at the woman.

The stranger balked at Danny’s arm, which, admittedly, did look like some beached sea creature, flopping about spastically between them. She put her hands in her pockets and Danny watched her fingers scrabble through the fabric, likely in search of some nonexistent cash.

“Or I could give you a ride somewhere?” Danny finally tried, a last-ditch effort at good Samaritan-ing today.

“No, uh,” the woman cleared her throat. “I’d, uhm, I’d rather walk.”

“Walk? Are you staying at a hotel around here?” Which would be interesting, considering the nearest hotel that Danny deemed acceptable (even on her meager budget) or affordable for non-celebrities (the square was notorious for ritzy five-stars) was a good two miles away.

“Yes, I… it’s just—” the woman spun, pointing about in a circle until she settled on a direction. “That way. I really don’t want to cause a scene, okay?” the woman, for all of Danny’s kindness, sounded nothing but exasperated.

Danny let her head flop back, exhausted by the blatant carelessness. She shook her head and reached into her backpack, found her wallet, and then handed the woman twenty Euro.

“Listen, I said I don’t—”

“Just use it for cab fare when you finally admit to yourself that you don’t know where you are,” Danny cut her off. Because if this woman was half as stubborn as she was beautiful, then Danny would no doubt fail in convincing her she needed a lift out of the snow.

“Listen here, Cinnamon, I know this city better than you think. It’s just… changed some since I’ve visited.”

“Cinnamon?” Danny scrunched her brows together. “Candy cane?”

“Don’t stew over it,” the woman chided, sneering at Danny’s embarrassment.

“You won’t even let me give you a lift and we’ve already escalated to pet names?” Danny threw back, willing to give as good as she got.

“Huh,” the woman returned. “Gingersnap’s got a little bite after all,” she assessed, her sneer turning playful, a sincere, tight-lipped grin. “I suppose some would find that endearing. A little white-knight action in a European winter wonderland.”

“Some?” Danny questioned, with her own challenging grin, daring to take a step closer.

“Yes, some,” the woman returned. “Those simpering fools with their cookie-cutter ideas of romance and heroism and holiday fantasy.”

“What’s wrong with lending a helping hand every now and then? It is nearly Christmas, after all.”

“You shouldn’t fall prey to the sentiment,” the woman warned. “ _Especially_ at Christmas. I seem to be walking proof that doing something nice will only result in being taken advantage of.”

“Surely you don’t really believe that?” Danny asked, suddenly invested.

“I believe in many things; a commercialized Rockwellian Santa Claus being the least of them. Krampus, on the other hand, and Kvaternica…”

The woman trailed off, glancing back at the fountain and flicking some windblown hair from her face. She ducked her head and crossed her arms over her chest before returning her attention to Danny.

“I didn’t intend to spend my morning in some philosophic debate over superficial holiday cheer,” she paused, and made an attempt at a smile. “I… ugh, _appreciate_ your help, so allow me to wish you ‘Merry Christmas’ and let’s be done with this.”

Her appreciation sounded like someone thanking a dentist for removing their molars, so Danny took that as her cue to exit.

“Fine,” Danny said, raising her hands in submission. “Didn’t mean to freak you out. Just, call a cab, or don’t,” she continued, backing away in the snow. “Sorry your stuff got taken,” she pivoted, the fuzziness lifting as she broke eye contact.

It still didn’t stop her from turning over her shoulder and yelling “Merry Christmas!” even though the woman had already disappeared.

Now, to attend to the business of construction delivery, a subject (unlike wayward women) she had more experience with. Danny whipped out her phone and scrolled to her recents.

“Kaspar?” Danny asked. “Give me an ETA on those skylights, buddy. I need to get them installed before I let the crew go for the holidays.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Uh, do you... like... cheese?"  
> "Why yes I do! My favorite's Gouda!" 
> 
> Ugh, you don't realize how contrived (I take it back, I do realize it, I just choose to suspend my disbelief over the flipping Grand Canyon) these meet-ups are when you get sucked into these holiday movies. But it makes for all these fluffy-bunny encounters, which I guess is what I signed up for. 
> 
> Thank you so much for all the love for this! Kudos to anyone who knows where the above quote came from ;)


	5. Chapter 5

“You could have at least warned me he was going to be here,” Danny grit through her teeth, sneaking behind Laura and into the kitchen.

After a full day of inhaling dust particles and going near deaf thanks to the power tools at multiple construction sites, it was nice to take the motorway northwest by herself and listen to quiet carols on the radio. Danny had made the drive out of the city and up to Leobon more times than she could count, especially once she and her foster sister instituted the bi-weekly dinners. Laura would get to ramble on excitedly about the weird at Silas, and Danny would get a meal with some pleasant company. Win-win.

There weren’t many dirtied plates and casserole dishes that needed immediate washing, but Danny was determined not to linger in the living room of Laura’s small student apartment. The handywoman took up her position at Laura’s sink and dunked her hands in the hot water; Laura slid the step stool beside her and mounted it, hand at the ready with a towel as Danny passed over the first dripping plate.

“I didn’t realize he was coming over until half an hour before you got here, okay?” Laura spoke softly, despite the television blaring in the next room.

Laura and her roommate Laf only got three channels, but it served as decent entertainment whenever they had friends over, or in this case, irritating mutual acquaintances.

“Besides, I wouldn’t have even gotten my turn with the camera if Theo had taken it back to the library. He checked it out under _his_ name, so he says he gets to use it whenever he wants.”

“Sounds like obvious bully material to me.”

“Nobody in class ever wants to partner with him,” Laura swiped so hard at the plate Danny thought she’d rub a hole through it. “Not counting the fact that he’s taken like, five victory laps at Silas. I think he was supposed to graduate when you did!”

“He might have,” Danny thought, but she didn’t spend too much time pondering the rude boys of her incoming class at university. “It still sucks that you got paired with him for your final broadcast project.”

“Tell me about it,” Laura lamented, polishing fork tines with her towel. “He’s all into traditional reporting styles; he never wants to try anything different, so vlogging is out of the question. He once said, ‘just the facts, mam’, in one of our mock interviews!”

“Seriously?” Danny snorted into the suds.

“And we were interviewing an old lady about a Snickerdoodle recipe!” Laura fumed. “Which, no offense to old Ingrid, but I’ve had better.”

“The cookie-connoisseur. That’s some Pulitzer-worthy reporting there, Hollis.”

“You try finding newsworthy participants for undergraduate journalism projects this time of year, willing to work around a student’s schedule,” Laura snipped back, elbowing Danny in the side for good measure. “Meanwhile, I’m too afraid to let him in on any of my…” Laura trailed off and turned over her shoulder, checking the doorway to the kitchen. “… you know, secret footage for the vlog. Now _that’s_ a story. I wish you’d let me come to a few more sites, I just need a couple of minutes of B-roll—”

“Laura, we’ve been through this,” Danny admonished. “First off, you outing those houses and their hauntings is going to seriously tank market value. How am I going to make any money then? I just got back on my feet.”

“But you get all the weird out of the way before you sell them!” Laura argued.

“But if people get the notion I’m purposefully flipping dirt-cheap houses because I have a knack for—”

“Combating the supernatural like some Buffy-wannabe?” Laura smirked.

“Hey!” Danny laughed, splashing dirty dishwater at the tiny woman. “I was going to say, that I have a talent for mining gold out of ugly rock. There’s some seriously good stuff in a lot of those houses—and I can turn them into homes; it just takes knowing how to work with the bad stuff on the surface. The bad seems more apparent, but a little bit of elbow grease, a few carefully worded threats with a wooden stake and a vial of holy water—”

“Laura, are you done in there?” Danny heard Theo yell from the main room. “We need to run through some of these package edits for the story!”

“Almost, Theo! We don’t have a dishwasher, so it’s going to be a few minutes!” Laura yelled back, rolling her eyes so hard Danny wondered whether they would get stuck in her skull. “I hope you noticed he didn’t offer to help at all.”

“I did notice,” Danny said, smiling down at her foster sister.

She unplugged the stopper and waited for the water to drain, chewing her bottom lip as she considered her options.

Danny wanted Laura to succeed, really, and that video project Laura had been working on for the past six months could definitely put her in the running for some prestigious student journalism prizes. Maybe even real-world journalism prizes. Laura was whip-smart, and deserved recognition more than anyone else Danny knew, but a lot of Laura’s material could be traced back to Danny’s fledgling business. Danny, and her dumb idea to expand her rather active role as a defender against all the creeptastic specters and tarasques and paranormals at Silas… and turn it into what had become a surprisingly lucrative business venture.

There seemed to be something about Styria, whether it was urban residences or rural universities. Abandoned houses in the area stayed abandoned for a reason, despite the crunch on the housing market in Europe. Nine times out of ten, it wasn’t just the rotting floorboards and the sparking fuses that made the property unmarketable. Poltergeists, shapeshifters, and, on one occasion, a wererabbit that made Bunniculla look cuddly, had all accosted Danny when she attempted to salvage buildings that could function as proper households… if it weren’t for the whole—haunted—aspect of the place.

European property values aside, Danny had to concede to Laura’s point. She _was_ really good at talking the weird out of a house. But every time Laura had caught some interesting footage, it had been at one of Danny’s construction sites. Sure, Danny wasn’t in Laura’s captured footage per se, but Laura had done the digging to interview previous owners, had even caught irrefutable tape of a swarm of gremlins tackling a set of mildewed draperies to the floor. She’d “borrowed” one of the physics department’s subsonic microphones and had transcribed the rumblings from one of the water heaters Danny was repairing to figure out that no, it wasn’t just a burned-out heating coil—that heater was actually a secret entrance to Tartarus.

Danny had taken a pretty hefty financial blow on that housing purchase.

“I think you should run the story,” Danny finally decided.

“What, these holiday fluff pieces our professors keep throwing our way?” Laura asked.

“No,” Danny wiped her hands on the dishtowel. “The story you’ve been working on.”

“What, seriously?!” Laura squealed, lunging into Danny’s torso.

“Hey now,” Danny choked, winded from Laura’s enthusiastic bear hug. “On one condition, Hollis.”

“You’re not in any of the footage I used, I swear!” Laura said.

“I know, it’s just… do you think you could hold off on breaking it until after Christmas Eve? I’ve got that dinner thing downtown, and, well, not that they would trace it back to me, but, if anybody did… I’d at least have that work thing out of the way before it all went south.”

“The dinner,” Laura’s eyebrows pinched upwards, and then her lids drooped closed. It didn’t take a psychic to figure that the girl had completely forgotten about it. “Your big dinner, on Christmas Eve—”

“It’s hardly a big dinner,” Danny said, trying to downplay the occasion. Because really, it wasn’t that big a thing. Installing those skylights on time tomorrow? Now _that_ was a big thing.

“The prof gave us our final assignment guidelines last Monday, and we all have to cover Christmas Eve events. Plus with the holidays, I’m pulling extra shifts at the consignment shop,” Laura wailed dramatically, flopping her head forward in mock defeat. “I’m going to be in Graz on Christmas Eve, but Theo and I have to be on the other side of town for some orchestra thing. Some princess from some country I can’t even find on a map is supposed to be introducing the national symphony—I honestly didn’t read the whole thing before Theo snatched the packet away. Kirsch is going to operate the camera, so we’ll have an extra set of hands, but Danny, I’m so sorry—”

“Laura, relax,” Danny smiled, trying to quell her sister’s guilt. “It’s not as important as you’re making it out to be.”

“You don’t hate me for bailing on you on Christmas Eve?” Laura slapped her hands over her face and peaked through her fingers, awaiting her final judgment.

“Hardly!” Danny said. “That is, as long as you and LaF are still letting me come over for cocoa and Christmas movies the next day.”

“Of course!”

“By the way, where is the mad scientist tonight?” Danny asked, moving towards her coat.

“Where do you think? Skype session with Perry,” Laura explained. “They’re probably down at the science building, hitting off the more reliable wi-fi connection. And I see you getting your coat means you’re leaving me here to fend for myself against—”

Laura silently inclined her head toward the living room, sighing in irritation.

“I didn’t sign up for a major that required all these partner projects,” Danny teased. “I work much better on my own.”

“You keep insisting on that,” Laura countered, raising one appraising brow. “But you’re always welcome to hop out there in the dating pool. It’s not as scary as you think.”

“Byyyyyyye, Laura,” Danny drawled, not wanting to get into this conversation for the second time in as many days.

“Call me when you get back to the city!” Laura yelled as she shuffled toward the front door. “It’s not a long drive to Chuck’s, but text me so I know you made it to the party!”

“You worry too much.”

“It’s snowing on the motorways!”

“Fine, I’ll text you. Get to work, Hollis!”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes at the top, cause I wanted to add to the reading experience! First off, thanks so much for anybody who's been keeping up with this! I really appreciate your readership. As you read the next chapter, I'd like to include a Christmas tune for your auditory enjoyment. There are a number of creepy-ish sounding carols out there. Far more than I'd imagined. So if you like to listen and read, here's double the fun!
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neC28UxqGks

So, perhaps she’d slightly miscalculated the whole ‘running away from obligations’ plan.

Carmilla turned into an empty phone booth and resigned herself to asking for assistance from the operator, but the chord to the device was slashed, significantly limiting her options.

Curse this human obsession with _progress_ , the expansion of once compacted settlements into all-consuming metropolises, growing like a virus and overrunning a previously isolated, lovely countryside. Graz’s main square had been torn apart, reassembled, and extended vertically to the point of incomprehension on Carmilla’s part. And the expanse of the city limits wasn’t within the hour or two’s walking distance it had been, centuries ago in her adolescence, when her father had presented her at seventeen and she’d come out into gentried society during the winter season. She’d not brought a map, out of stubborn pride, and had wandered aimlessly in the cold for the entire day. Though exhausted, she’d resisted plucking an urchin off the streets for a little snack in case mother already had her changeling securities swarming. The last thing she needed to do was give herself away by being careless and leaving a trail.

Then again, look what carelessness had gotten her: alone, fatigued, and near frozen, and no closer to the art gallery than she’d been since she’d escaped that morning.

She’d been awake all day, and even though it was her prime time for activity at the onset of night, she wanted nothing more than a stein of alcohol and a flat surface (soft or not, she wasn’t picky at this point) to crash on. Carmilla was long past acknowledging her failures, damning her pride, and crawling back to mother. Punishment would be inevitable, and, if she were lucky, swift, while only relatively painful.

So much for a few days of peace at Yuletide, a season brimming with such cheer she couldn’t help but feel less monstrous.

As she continued her trudge on the sidewalk, the brick building beside her exploded with sound. Through the blurred glass, she could make out multi-colored lights strung about tinsel-laden fir trees, the candles placed amongst the fragrant holly wreathes on the windowsills mocking with their cozy glow. She used the cuff of her sleeve to wipe away the fog from the window and caught sight of a zither… or perhaps it was an autoharp. She couldn’t be sure from so far away. Unmistakable to her trained ear were the sonorous rumblings of an upright piano, lodged against the back wall of the building. Even if she ended up freezing to near-death, she could still drift off with joyful (albeit slightly off-key) carols.

The press of frozen brick against the back of her second-hand coat was spine-chilling. Two-minutes into her musical vigil, Carmilla was nearly knocked to the ground by some idiot who’d turned a corner too sharply.

“Oh, no, I’m—I’m so sorry!” said idiot stuttered in apology.

If Carmilla hadn’t been about to keel over from exhaustion, the idiot would have made a scrumptious snack, or—taking stock of the build, the muscles under the overcoat, the crafted features of the face—more of feast-worthy entrée.

“Hey!” the idiot said, and it was with stalled awareness that Carmilla recognized the woman who’d tried to play knight to her plight that very morning on the main square.

“Hello,” Carmilla said, like the conversational genius that she was.

“What the heck are you doing all the way over here?” the woman asked, pulling a navy scarf that had been jostled during their run-in tighter about her neck.

Yum, that sculpted, muscley neck—

“Just…” Carmilla flicked her hand out, at an obvious loss. “Seeing the sights.”

“Sightseeing?” the idiot pushed. “At night?”

“I like Christmas lights,” Carmilla grumped.

“Fair enough,” the woman smiled, and it must have been testament to Carmilla’s exhaustion that she found it charming.

“So did you ever get a hold of the police?” the woman asked.

“The police?”

“… about your bag? And your camera?”

“Oh, yes, the… police,” Carmilla said, nodding slowly to herself. “Yes, they, they said they had it taken care of.”

The woman crossed her arms over her chest and leaned up against the wall next to Carmilla, twisting her head in a fetching manner that managed to ooze skepticism at the same time.

“And you told them you had a witness, right?”

“Witness?” Carmilla asked.

“That’d be me.”

“Oh, sure,” Carmilla continued, lying through her chattering teeth. “They said they found some, uh, evidence, and were going to, well—” what was it that the police did nowadays? “—crack this case _wide_ open.”

“Evidence? For a couple of Christmas cons? What kind of evidence?”

“The kind that catches the bad guys, I’m sure,” Carmilla answered cryptically.

“Well, I’m… I’m glad that worked out for you, then,” the woman kept grinning, and her countenance, flushed from the cold, was utterly captivating in its genuineness.

Wow, Carmilla desperately needed some shuteye if she was getting this worked up over another pretty face.

At the measured pause in which the pair did little more than gawk at each other, the building beside them struck up another verse of wassailing, which jolted both of them out of their reveries and induced some embarrassed, silence-breaking chuckles.

“They certainly sound like they’re making the most of the season,” Carmilla offered.

“They usually do.”

“Is that where you’re heading?” Carmilla asked, turning back toward the window. Inside, the revelers were dressed in varying degrees of costume, from traditional Austrian garb to fur vests with horned accoutrements, one Santa beard among them and a fair collection of church Bishop’s hats. “You seem staggeringly underdressed for the occasion.”

“I’m just a guest, not part of the club,” the woman explained. “Would you… uhm, would you like to come in?”

“Oh,” Carmilla grabbed at the edges of her knit cap and pulled it over her ears. “I wouldn’t want to intrude. Plus, it’s getting pretty late, I suppose.”

“It’s no intrusion,” the woman returned.

The response came a little too quick to be uninterested, Carmilla noticed smugly.

“And these guys look forward to this every year. They’ll definitely outlast me.”

“It’s okay, really,” Carmilla explained. “I’m just heading back to my hotel—it’s right over, uhm, this way,” Carmilla nodded off to some indistinct distance to her right, hoping the well-meaning mortal wouldn’t call her bluff.

“What’s one cup of cider?” the woman asked again, gentle as a breeze off a mountain lake. “They’ve got a great light set-up in there. Candles and a Yule log in the hearth.”

“You don’t even know me,” Carmilla objected. “What if I’m a mass-murdering psychopath?”

“No mass-murdering psychopath gets misty-eyed at carols and faerie lights, no matter how much they try to play the dark, disaffected loner type,” the woman retorted. “Then again, you’ve got a perfectly valid point. If that’s the case, can I request that you curb your mass-murdering tendencies until those nice old people in there are finished with their party?”

Carmilla grinned despite herself, a little peeved that she’d been so easily figured out by this well-meaning, admittedly stunning fool of a woman. “Might be harder than you think, CinnaBon, but I’ll make an effort.”

“That’s all I ask,” the woman smiled, and lead Carmilla through the front door to a simpering, trite, utterly lovely Christmas gathering.

 

* * *

 

 

“Danny!” Chuck hollered from across the room.

Danny watched, bemused, as the old magician made his merry way over to her and her guest. He sported a tailored vest of blues, greens, and reds, with intricate white tatting along the hems that reminded Danny of the fluffy frosting at the junctured walls and roofs of gingerbread houses.

“I didn’t think you’d make it back because the roads have been so—oh, hello,” Chuck’s demeanor brightened (if that were even possible), as he took an alarmingly large swig of what Danny wagered was the man’s third cup of spiked cider. “Asha!” Chuck yelled, and his wife materialized at his side. “Danny’s just arrived, and she’s brought a… someone.”

“Oh, wonderful!” Asha shuffled closer to Danny, enfolding her in a tight embrace. She whispered in Danny’s ear: “You help me wrangle the stampeding Krampuses and I promise not to let him embarrass you too much.”

“Understood,” Danny mumbled into her shoulder, inhaling the seasonal scents of allspice, candied currants, and cloves.

“This is Charles Birdwell, or, Chuck,” Danny said to the woman at her side. “He owns the shop, with the best magician’s selection in all of Styria. And this is his wife—”

“Former performance assistant!”

“—Asha,” Danny finished.

Asha was as tall as Danny and a shade darker than her husband. A phenomenal baker and an even better story teller, Asha stood before them in a cloak of cedar-brown, a holly wreath wrapped around her head, her salt-and-pepper hair knotted below the twigs she’d looped into place. Her expressive, sober eyes tracked every exuberant body in the room until they lingered, calculating but kind, over the woman at Danny’s side.

“And who is this?” Asha asked easily, releasing Danny from her comforting hold.

“Oh,” Danny’s jaw unhinged and worked in silence… because of course she’d yet to ask the little girl lost for her name.

The woman beside her seemed to come to the same conclusion at Danny’s dumbstruck silence, and salvaged the introductions:

“Carmilla,” the woman answered, eyes darting back and forth across the room uncertainly. “Carmilla… Holiday.”

“Carmilla,” Asha repeated. “Such a beautiful name, I don’t believe I’ve heard it in this region. Are you from around here, or just visiting?”

“Uhm, yes,” Carmilla mumbled at Danny’s side. “I’m visiting… and I’m from… around.”

“What about your—”

“How about we get these coats off and hit the cider?” Danny tried to halt the inquisition.

“Best idea I’ve heard all night!” Chuck agreed. “Come my dear,” Chuck said, relieving Carmilla of her grey coat and offering her his arm. “Allow me to escort you to our varied and diverse selection of delicacies and aperitifs, otherwise known as the buffet table and punch bowl. And if you see any enchantments on the shelves that catch your eye, I’d be only too honored to dazzle you.”

“Charming,” Carmilla grinned slyly. “I’m witnessing more and more evidence that chivalry isn’t in fact dead.”

“Not while I’m around!” Chuck agreed, whisking Carmilla off toward the tin mugs and fruity slices of Linzer torte.

“So,” Asha fell in line right beside Danny. “Carmilla, was it?”

“Apparently,” Danny answered.

“Chuck led me to believe you’d be coming as a solo act tonight.”

“Don’t you start, too,” Danny pleaded, shuffling through the costumed elderlies toward the wet bar. “At least not until I’ve had a drink.”

“Oh, don’t think you’ll escape that easily,” Asha said, taking chase.

 

* * *

 

 

“So… what’s the story?” Chuck asked Danny half an hour later, when she’d been quietly munching on a headless elf cookie. She’d hung out at the buffet table for the better part of ten minutes, nervous as a middle schooler for some reason she couldn’t articulate.

“What do you mean?”

“Carmilla!” Chuck answered. “She asked me if I was a warlock in disguise and I couldn’t hold back the pride.”

“There’s no story, Charles,” Danny deflected, dunking the remaining pastry leg into the dregs of her cocoa.

“Well, you didn’t just find her wandering the streets like a lunatic, certainly.”

Danny swallowed the last bit of cookie. “Actually—”

“Danny!”

“I’m serious, Chuck! Some guys swiped her purse and her camera this morning and I tried to help is all. I ran into her again outside and asked if she wanted to get out of the snow for an hour.”

Danny surveyed the room until she found Carmilla, standing beside one of the many trees with Asha. They were rearranging ornaments and Carmilla was smirking, in what Danny was beginning to assume was her signature expression—like she wouldn’t allow herself to give into a full smile.

“She’s pretty,” Chuck said.

“Yeah…” Danny agreed, until she saw the reflection of the dopey grin plastered on her face in the mirror above the hearth. “If you’re into that whole rude, enigmatic thing.”

“She could be overly cautious because she’s in trouble,” Chuck said seriously.

“What, you mean like a runaway?” Danny asked, her skepticism fading to concern instantaneously.

“I’m just saying, Asha told me those pants and shoes are designer labels. That sweater she’s got? Kind of older, but high quality. Doesn’t really go with the second-hand coat she was wearing when she came in.”

Danny could have cursed herself for missing the signs of a runaway, having known all too intimately what that anxiety and uncertainty felt like. But then again, fashion wasn’t exactly her expertise.  

“Would explain why she lied about talking to the police,” Danny murmured, retreating to the keg for another round and a moment to think.

Meanwhile, across the room, Asha had Carmilla wrapped up in her own series of questions.

“So how long have you known Danny?” Asha asked.

“Who?” Carmilla raised her brows as she wiped cookie crumbs from her lips.

Asha narrowed her eyes and nodded toward the tall red-head across the room.

“Oh, _Danny_ ,” Carmilla recovered inelegantly. “Not… not long.”

“Well, she’s never brought anyone to the party before. You should feel special,” Asha said.

“Yes, and what is with this party?” Carmilla asked, hoping to redirect the conversational trajectory from her own shoddy history. “These aren’t your standard fare for modern Christmas costumes.”

“That’s because everyone here turns their noses up at ‘modern’ Christmas staples,” Asha explained. “We’re not big on the commercialized holidays. My husband, for example, made his own costume years ago. He’s the Jolly Old Elf, one of the pagan Germanic inspirations for Father Christmas.”

Carmilla whipped around, and, for the first time since seeing Danny again, actually smiled. “I knew I recognized those colors—”

“So you’re familiar with Austrian Yule traditions?” Asha asked.

“You could say I have a vested interest,” Carmilla joked, nodding toward Chuck.

“Why is that?”

“Oh, uhm… ancestors. ‘S why I’m visiting,” Carmilla returned, staring silently at the tree before her. Thankfully, Asha took the hint and pried no further.

“Yes, well, everyone here volunteers to participate in different Christmas celebrations around the city. Some pass out candy early in the month as St. Nicholas, others terrify the naughty children at the Christmas markets with their pitchforks and furs as Krampus.”

“And you?” Carmilla asked, though she had a fair guess. “You look like that horned woman that shapeshifts into the dragon in those children’s films.”

“Perchta,” Asha answered, giving a little curtsey for Carmilla’s appraisal. “Legend says that I leave silver coins and treats in shoes and stockings, if children have been very good throughout the year.”

“And do you slit their bellies if they’ve been naughty?” Carmilla asked, at which Asha double-taked dramatically. “Or… so I’ve heard,” Carmilla deflected miserably.

“Hello ladies,” Danny arrived just then, a conversational God-send.

Carmilla didn’t think she’d be able to keep up her bumbling pretense much longer. There were only so many reasons that visitors would be intimately familiar with pagan Alpine folklore.

“Refill?” Danny asked, passing the steaming mug over to Carmilla. “It’s mulled wine. One of the Christkind costumers makes a homemade stock every season, which I find a little ironic.”

“Thank you,” Carmilla said, grateful for the distraction.

The vampire princess took a sip of the mulled wine and tingles spread through her insides. It might have been the alcohol or the fire, or the scent of pine and peppermint, or some enchanted combination bolstered by Danny, Chuck and Asha that weighted her eyelids and filled the gaping space where her heart once beat with a noticeable stirring. Carmilla was too tired and too content to investigate the source of such an irregular (though no less welcome) comfort.

“Come on,” Danny directed, tapping gently at her arm. “They’re about to start another round of carols.”

“Alright,” Carmilla said, and followed Danny to the only open seats near the piano.

The pair sat together and traded awkward grins on a hand-me-down sofa Chuck had dragged out of the back office to offer the guests more seating. They stared at the sturdy-backed single chairs that had quickly filled with crafted felt costumes and jingle bell ties, pulled up closer to the piano for the more daring sing-along participants.

“So, you’re big on Christmas lights and mulled wine, from what I’ve seen,” Danny said. “What about caroling?”

“I’m not deep enough in my cups for that,” Carmilla answered.

“Me neither. Don’t let Chuck catch you humming, or he’ll pull you up to serenade the whole crowd.”

“I’ll keep that warning in mind,” Carmilla answered, polishing off her third (or fourth?) mug of wine.

“See that thing there?” Danny pointed toward a stringed instrument in the shape of a trapezoid. A pudgy, bearded man with pointy, Elvin shoes laid the piece across his knees and held two small mallets in his hand. “It’s a—”

“Hammered dulcimer,” Carmilla finished, as the man struck the first haunting chords of “O Come O Come Emmanuel.”

“I haven’t seen one of those in ages,” Carmilla smiled languidly, setting her mug aside and curling her feet underneath her body on the sofa.

“I never saw one before I moved here,” Danny whispered, then turned her attention back to the musician.

The strains of the hymn were smooth and familiar. The crowd in the room quieted as the song progressed, the undulating pattern of notes and harmonies rocking everyone’s full, tipsy bodies like a lullaby in sync with a cradle’s sway. Chuck and Asha unplugged all of the faerie lights until only the candles and hearth fire remained glowing. The musician transitioned into “Stille Nacht,” and the reverent room mimicked the lyrics’ subject matter. No one hummed; no one sang along. The remaining guests just listened, and enjoyed, and reflected internally over what they held dear and holy.

For Danny, it was nights like these; a hard day’s work behind her and dinner with her family, celebrating with her friends, and a good turn done for someone down on their luck.

No one would know what Carmilla considered holy, for she had drifted, softly as a snowflake, into a peaceful slumber against Danny’s shoulder.


	7. Chapter 7

“Hey,” Danny said quietly, jostling Carmilla’s shoulder. “Carmilla?” she tried again, holding a mug of coffee under the woman’s nose. “Time to wake up.”

Carmilla gave a deep little groan and turned over so the light from the windows wasn’t shining in her face.

“I doubt it,” she rasped, and Danny found herself biting her lip, Carmilla’s early-morning, sleep-weary voice indisputably attractive.

“It’s almost eight-thirty. That’s coffee time.”

“That’s _bed time_ , Gingersnap,” Carmilla answered, grudgingly rolling back to face Danny.

Carmilla blinked her brown eyes and shivered against the morning chill. Danny felt a little guilty, just covering her up with that grey coat she had worn the previous day. But Chuck had left a lamp and the downstairs radiator on to keep her comfy in the night despite the trouble with his faulty fuses; and the more Carmilla stirred, the more Danny saw what a night of good food and good rest could do in the way of rejuvenation.

Even after she’d spent an evening on the couch, in yesterday’s rumpled clothes no less… Carmilla dazzled.

“So you’re not an early riser,” Danny said. “Noted.”

She passed the coffee over and watched as Carmilla took a prolonged, careful sip.

“Good stuff,” she said.

“Thanks,” Danny answered.

“But it could definitely use some bloo—oh, crap. What time did you say it was?” Carmilla asked, frantically rising from the couch. The coffee sloshed and spilled, and Danny back away at Carmilla's colorful curse.

“Eight-thirty,” Danny answered.

“And it’s the… the twenty-second, is that right?” Carmilla asked, depositing the mug on a side table and shoving the red cap back on her head.

“Yeah, but time and date aren’t disqualifiers for a cup of coffee, you know.”

“I know,” Carmilla said, blinking her eyes. “It’s just… I really need to go. I shouldn’t have stayed here. I need to leave.”

“Leave so quickly you don’t have time for breakfast?”

“I—I’m sorry,” Carmilla answered, rocketing up from the couch and buttoning the coat she’d been laying on only half-way in her haste. “Thank you, truly, for last night,” she mumbled. Her face, twisted and contorted from worry, seemed to regret the following admission: “It was… I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it was the best Christmas I’ve had in years.”

Carmilla nodded a tight smile, then darted across the shop and out the front door in a wave of anxious mystery. Danny collapsed on the couch, a little disappointed and a lot confused. She pulled Chuck’s flattened throw pillow out of the crease where the couch cushion met the arm and punched it, the goose-down a safe enough victim for her frustrations. After the pillow assault, Danny redirected her attention to where Carmilla had spent her night, and glimpsed the corner pages of a book; she excavated the well-worn paperback volume with a picture of a camera on the cover from its grave in the couch crease.

“Wait a sec,” Danny mumbled, flipping through the heavily annotated volume. Out of the pages dropped a curious amulet, a small purple stone set in etched silver, cast in the shape of an anchor. Danny shot up, and raced out the front door after Carmilla.

“Hey!” Danny hollered, astounded that Carmilla had already made it to the end of the block. Could the woman teleport, or was her worry intense enough to inspire Jackie Robinson-like speed? Danny held the book and necklace aloft until Carmilla turned and, upon recognition, clutched at her neck and back pocket like a surprised film starlet from the 1940s.

Danny shrugged her shoulders and shook the items to call attention to them, then made her way down the sidewalk toward a returning Carmilla. They met in the middle of the block, where Danny held out both items to a woman who had seemed to regain her more leisurely mental-control.

“Thanks,” Carmilla said, reaching, surprisingly, for the book first. “It was one thing to lose the camera. If I’d forgotten the book…” Carmilla trailed off, fondly running her thumb over the spine. “Well, it would have really put a damper on a tolerable night in decent company.”

Though not an outright complement, Danny couldn’t help the heat rising furiously in her cheeks.

“Thought you would’ve missed the jewelry first,” Danny said, dangling the necklace from her finger. “Nice bit of bling, you got there.”

Carmilla eyed it cautiously. “Yes, well… I’m just full of surprises.”

“As I keep discovering,” Danny returned, twirling the chain over her fingers like a kid playing with a yo-yo string.

“Can we trade?” Carmilla handed her book back to Danny and then took the amulet, unlatching the hook and pulling both ends around her neck. “It’s not one of my more treasured pieces,” Carmilla said, sticking her tongue out as she worked with the catch. “Could you maybe…?”

“Oh, sure!” Danny said, exchanging the necklace for the book as Carmilla turned and pulled her hair off of her porcelain neck. Danny took the chain in her hands and began her task, fastening the latch around Carmilla’s neck. “Jewelry from an ex-boyfriend?” she chanced.

“Ha!” Carmilla laughed below her, dark and skeptical and far too alluring for someone who’d woken up ten minutes previously. “Hardly.”

“Husband, then?” Danny held her breath as she got the hook to catch.

“I’d have to like men to have a husband,” Carmilla answered with an eyebrow jiggle, tucking the anchor underneath the collar of her coat. “Or a boyfriend, for that matter. I got this when I was… born, I guess. My mother gave it to me.”

“Seems like a nice gift.”

Not that Danny would know anything about mothers.

“Though, kinda impractical for a newborn,” Danny teased.

“It’s not a gift,” Carmilla clarified, and there was derision there, a trickle of warning. “It’s a reminder.”

“Of what?” Danny pushed.

“That I can’t just run away from my obligations,” Carmilla answered, the bones of her knuckles faded snow-white with the strength of her clutch over the amulet. “No matter how desperately I might wish to.”

And with that rather dismally abstruse explanation, Danny scratched the back of her neck, regretting bringing anything up about the necklace in the first place.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Carmilla groused. “Not like anyone can do anything about it.”

“But even so, it doesn’t seem very fair.”

“I just…” Carmilla looked down at the paperback book in her hands. “I don’t suppose you’re familiar with Roland Barthes, are you?”

“No,” Danny shrugged, a little thrown by the topic change. “But I wouldn’t mind hearing about him.”

“He wasn’t even a photographer,” Carmilla explained glumly, flipping the pages of the short book in front of her. “He was a… critic, a philosopher, a literary theorist.”

“Many hats,” Danny said, motioning toward Carmillla’s own knitted crown.

“Yes, well,” Carmilla mumbled, taking a moment to pause and collect her thoughts.

Danny noticed that she never spoke hurriedly, so to see Carmilla jump up from the couch so quickly this morning, contrary to her usual, lazy city strolling, left Danny puzzled. Even in her explanations, in her surging then sinking lilt, Carmilla paced her cadences. In Danny’s whirl-about schedule of orders and equipment, client addresses and crew rotations, she never had many moments of such… stillness. Perhaps Danny’s lack of that confident inertia was why she thought Carmilla wore the quality so well. Why Danny… almost considered it admirable. It was something Danny herself would never be able to do: pause, linger, reflect for reflection’s sake. Even running into her the previous evening, standing, paralyzed like some upright corpse against the exterior brick of Chuck’s building, Carmilla seemed to have resigned herself to a peaceful slowness.

After Carmilla’s day of probable, purposeless wandering, she still thought it acceptable to post up outside of an unfamiliar building and play fly-on-the-wall to some random Christmas party. It forced Danny to consider the woman’s motivations, her history, what she was running from and where she was going, and how a forgotten photography pamphlet and ancient amulet figured into the equation that constituted one Carmilla Holiday.

“Barthes wrote this book,” Carmilla finally explained. “It’s sort of the final chapter in a series of essays offering his thoughts on photography… how it functioned as close to a representation of reality as humanity could achieve. But inherent in representation is a copy, not an actual—a _re-_ presenting, you get it?”

“So a bit of flawed logic on his part,” Danny nodded, content with playing soundboard to Carmilla’s musings.

Not only was the woman a heart-stoppingly beautiful puzzle; she was likewise proving herself wicked smart.

“Perhaps,” Carmilla admitted. “But it wasn’t really a photography critique. This book… it’s about how he feels when he looks at a picture of his mother.”

“And lemme guess,” Danny went on. “She wasn’t… in the picture any more?”

“Ha,” Carmilla said, with very little humor. “He wrote it just after his mother passed. Long story short, he talks about the studium. The—well, I guess the details that make up the context of the photo; and then the punctum, translated to—the ‘point’ or the ‘prick’ in Latin—it’s the thing about the photo that resonates, that hits the viewer; the thing that makes the photograph priceless to you.”

“But… worthless to somebody else?” Danny wagered.

“Exactly,” Carmilla agreed, brightening slightly at Danny’s comprehension. “Everyone can identify the studium. However, the punctum is—”

“Personal, subjective.”

“Not always, but sometimes. Different people have different conceptions of… intimacy,” Carmilla mumbled, looking up at Danny through fluttery black lashes. “It leaves you with something, an intangible wound or ‘prick’—in that instant you realize the picture in front of you isn’t really a memory, because you’re looking at it in the now. It’s just a _re_ presentation of a memory, an exterior chronicle of lived experience. But that’s you, years ago, somehow in the present. A poignant sort of time travel.”

“And even if this book isn’t a photograph,” Danny went on, eyeing the aged book in Carmilla’s hands. “It’s your own punctum… or something like it?”

Carmilla offered the book her own half-smile, an appraisal that felt all too secretive under Danny’s curious gaze.

“I suppose you could say that. After centuries of viewing things one way, it taught me to see things in another light. _Lucida_ , as the title suggests.”

“Centuries?” Danny asked, still not quite following Carmilla’s somber exegesis.

“Feels like millennia,” Carmilla said wistfully, heaving a heavy breath and nodding against some welling tears that Danny decided not to point out. “There’s this traveling exhibit, down at the Kunsthaus Graz. That’s where I was trying to go yesterday, why I left and started this whole ordeal in the first place. But… the city has changed a lot since I last visited.”

“You mean the big bubble gallery?” Danny asked, perking up at the mention of the Kunsthaus. “That’s Cook and Fournier’s building. You were nowhere near the right place yesterday morning.”

“As evinced by my current predicament,” Carmilla gestured grandly to the empty, chilly street before her.

“From where I stand, there’s no predicament,” Danny offered, drawing Carmilla’s attention back to her by tapping her gently on the forearm. “Unless it’s life or death, you can be anywhere you want, as far as I’m concerned. That’s your choice, and nobody should compel you to do anything you don’t want to.”

“You don’t understand,” Carmilla answered, her derision evident in an eye roll that caused half her iris to disappear. “You have no concept of obligation. It’s not as simple as you make it out to be.”

“Are you calling me a simpleton?” Danny challenged.

“Don’t tempt me. I’m just saying the situation is _complex_.”

“Fine,” Danny conceded. “I’m not going to pry into your affairs. You want to go to the gallery. That’s what I’ve got so far. Let’s distill your big batch of messy complexities into more elemental components and _make_ it simple. Are you hungry?” Danny asked.

“What?”

“Simple, yes or no. Are. You. Hungry?” Danny tried again, punctuating her words with a head bob for dramatic effect.

Carmilla eyed her critically: “… yes.”

“Then let’s go back to Chuck’s and grab some breakfast. Drink a full mug of coffee this time,” Danny said, laying out the plan. She was very good at plans. It was basically her job (demo and reno plans, floor plans, design plans, etc.). “The gallery doesn’t open until ten, but I can take you there. It’s a little far, but walkable from here,” Danny pointed northward, off in the distance toward the river and the Schlossberg hill.

Carmilla seemed to consider the offer, shifting her weight in those combat boots, lazily, back and forth like a pendulum. She clutched at the collar of her coat, and Danny marveled at her description of such a pretty necklace: an obligation, an anchor. But her hands gravitated back toward the Barthes book, and, with a huff of resignation, Carmilla nodded.

“Might as well; I've been gone this long," Carmilla huffed irritably. “If you can get me to the gallery, I can probably stomach some left over Christmas cookies.”

“Let’s see what they have in the way of breakfast foods before we jump straight to the sweets,” Danny said, allowing Carmilla to fall into step beside her as they turned back to Chuck’s shop.

“And coffee?” Carmilla inquired, trying (and failing) not to sound hopeful.

Danny smirked her satisfaction.

“I’ll make him break out the French press,” she promised.

“Don’t tease me, Red.”

“I never joke about coffee,” Danny said, holding the shop door open for them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love you guys for reading! The more I write, the more off-the-rails I get as far as the Hallmark movie is concerned. But I'm far enough in now that I don't care. And thanks for putting up with some less-than-stellar editing and phrasing on my part. I'm churning this out a bit more quickly than I usually do thanks to the Christmas deadline. 
> 
> Cheers!


	8. Chapter 8

“She holds that toolbox like a lifeline,” Carmilla commented, moving on to her second cup of dark roast.

If she was going to function this early and play a convincing mortal, she was definitely going to need some sort of stimulant. Caffeine might also help her powers of observation and investigation: she knew next to nothing about the people who’d felt compelled to show a random act of kindness to a reticent drifter.

In cheerful mortal fashion, Chuck and Asha delighted at Danny’s and her choosing to stay for breakfast; the couple had proceeded to stuff food down the gullets of both women (Asha deeming her and Danny too thin for such cold months).

Presented with boiled eggs, toasted rolls smothered in honey, butter, and apricot jam, as well as some cold cuts left over from the previous evening, Carmilla leaned back, stuffed to bursting at the small kitchen table of the apartment behind the shop. No demanding mother, no Changeling imperial guard, and no forced appearances for a gullible public. Just some leggy eye-candy and two entertaining enough elders, who’d learned quickly not to pry during last night’s festivities.

Now if she could just get a mug of blood, everything would be perfect.

“It is her livelihood, I suppose,” Chuck said, returning to the topic of the womanly cinnamon stick in the front room. He and Carmilla peered around the corner to catch a glimpse of Danny, who was trying to negotiate the innards of a fickle wall outlet with a set of wire cutters. “Ever since she quit her corner-office gig downtown, she’s been attached to that box at the hip.”

“Gingersnap out there?” Carmilla questioned, eyebrows shooting skyward incredulously. “She hardly seems like the business type.”

_Though put her in a pencil skirt, some navy tights, one of those blazers that plunged—_

Carmilla shook the image from her mind’s eye. It was way too early for that trail of thinking.

“When I retired, Asha here suggested I open a shop,” Chuck began, settling back into his seat. He laced his fingers over his rotund belly, and nodded toward the front of the store. “You know, to keep the ‘ole magic muscles from getting rusty.”

“A warlock out of practice is no warlock at all,” Carmilla commented, which earned her a calculated stare from Asha.

“Anyway,” Asha continued, “When we walked in, we never expected our landlord to be so young. Or a woman, for that matter.”

“Really?” Carmilla asked, begrudgingly invested.

“Grumpiest young lady I’d ever laid eyes on,” Chuck said, hefting himself out of the chair to take a load of dishes to the sink. “She got her degree in architecture and minored in literature out at Silas, but then transferred to Vienna to get a fancy MBA. Thought she wasn’t going to be able to provide for herself on such a ‘flimsy’ specialty,” he looked back round the corner at Danny, and turned the faucet on to muffle his voice. “But soon enough, she was at the top of her game, one of the youngest property realtors in all of Austria.”

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same woman?” Carmilla challenged. “Out there in the hoodie, with the primer stains on her jeans and the ratty scarf? Big-shot real estate tycoon Danny Lawrence?”

“The very same,” Asha smiled her pride.

“What happened?” Carmilla scrunched her face up, unable to work out Gingerbread’s incentive for leaving such a cushy position.

“She hated it, of course,” Chuck clarified. “Said she felt like she couldn’t breathe in that clinical office, all the way up on the top floor in the business district. Silas—where she did her undergrad? It was always kind of rural, and she loved it out there, much more than Vienna. She wanted a job where she could get back to the openness of the suburbs, but still get in-and-out of the city. Get her hands dirty,” Chuck motioned with his hulking sausage fingers. “Take it from the expert, that woman is magic with her hands.”

And Carmilla, impressed as she was, had to bite her tongue to keep from saying something crass.

“So she gave it all up?” Carmilla ventured instead, studying the ripples in her coffee mug.

“Sunk everything she had into starting her own business. Lawrence Restoration,” Asha sipped at her tea. “And was happy, for the most part. But then Gretchen…”

“Who’s Gretchen?” Carmilla asked, a little too quickly for her own liking.

Chuck and Asha shared a grimace, before dropping their voices.

“Danny’s girlfriend,” Chuck explained. “Or, was. They’d gotten together during her stint in Vienna.”

“I suppose it didn’t work out.”

“After Danny quit the firm…” Asha sighed, rubbing her hand against her chin, as if weighing the prospects of revealing the upcoming information. She eventually judged Carmilla worthy to hear: “Gretchen told Danny she didn’t sign up for some flannel-wearing cliché that made a living with power tools.”

“You must be joking,” Carmilla mumbled, stung on Danny’s behalf.

“As you can imagine,” Asha continued, grave. “It hit her pretty hard.”

In her darker moments, Carmilla had definitely thought some nastier things; but the cruelty of humans, as well as their ability to wound one another so acutely, would never cease to astonish her. Yet even in the face of such insult, Danny had been nothing but nice, genuine, and helpful…

Carmilla decided Gretchen was the kind of human she’d like to meet in a dark alley on a hungry night.

“So she’s been working non-stop ever since,” Chuck finished. “Getting her construction company off the ground.”

“Maybe doesn’t make the same as she had been up in that stuffy office, but she’s doing just fine for herself. Building up quite the reputation,” Asha chimed in. “At least now she _enjoys_ what she’s doing, even if she seems a little lonely.”

“Think that’s as good as it’s gonna get for now, Chuck!” Danny yelled from the front room.

The trio around the breakfast table watched as Danny took the wire strippers and shoved them into the recesses of her box, then closed the thing with a banging _thud_. Danny lumbered up off the ground and walked to the back, while Asha busied herself near the refrigerator and the sink. Chuck crossed to talk damage reports with Danny.

“It’s safe, for now, but I’m going to get a crew over here first thing in the new year to rewire the whole place,” Danny explained.

“But it’s not going to burn the shop to cinders if we plug the fairy lights in, will it?” Chuck teased.

“Nice to know you think so highly of my handiwork,” Danny grinned, gathering the man up in a monstrous bear hug. “Asha, can’t thank you enough for breakfast.”

“Anytime, dear. Carmilla, it was an absolute pleasure to meet you! Come back any time,” she said, handing Carmilla a to-go coffee container the size of a newborn infant. There was a card attached with a Christmas sticker; Carmilla couldn’t help the smile unfurling across her face, like unspooled ribbons curling over presents. It was cutesy, hackneyed, and cornier than an Orville Redenbacher festival… but nice enough, all the same.

“Why is hers bigger than mine?” Danny whined childishly, sipping from her own take away cup.

“Because you didn’t spend the night on the couch,” Asha responded, perfunctory and brimming with a faux haughtiness.

“And probably never will. Isn’t that right, Ginger Giant?” Carmilla quipped, taking a soothing sip of… _blood_.

Blood?

Holy—

_Ooooh, blood_.

Oh… crap.

“I guess that depends on the disposition of any future significant others,” Danny responded, distracted. “Should that ever come to pass.”

Carmilla snorted against her travel mug, and coughed, suddenly twitchy and apprehensive in the tight back kitchen, the space a likely apothecary and summoning room for a warlock and a pagan priestess. She'd just been needling the old man, not suggesting he actually possessed some power in this pathetic shop, with its cutesy disappearing cabinets and sword boxes and juggling balls and scarves and...

Oh… _damn._

It was a good cover-up; a warlock hidden in plain sight.

“Are you alright, Carmilla?” Chuck asked.

He was doing a phenomenal job of feigning concern; Carmilla wagered he had designs on plunging a stake into her thoracic cavity.

“Do you want some water?” he asked.

“No… no, I’m fine,” Carmilla responded, confused and more on-edge than she’d been yesterday. She backed away from the pair of them, her butt knocking over the salt and pepper shakers as she rammed into the table.

“Well, you two have a fun time at the gallery,” Asha said, looking slightly confused. “We’ll see you soon, Danny.”

Danny started out toward the front of the shop, but Carmilla didn’t seem to notice her leaving.

“Carmilla? You sure you’re okay?” Danny asked, shuffling back, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Yes,” Carmilla answered, nearly splintering the table top her grip was so tight. “Yes, I’m… coffee was just hot,” she lied. “Scalded my tongue, but I’m okay.”

She clipped at Danny’s heels as they exited the shop and hit the pavement, eager to get as far away from Charles and Asha Birdwell as she could.

“Are you sure you don’t want to turn around for a glass of water? They seem quite taken with you, it’d be no trouble.”

“No, it’s fine, just… can we pause, only for a moment?” Carmilla said, her neurons firing at a frenzied pace. Too much coffee, and not nearly enough blood.

She couldn’t resist taking a huge gulp from the near-liter of AB blend the peculiar pair had provided. And it was refreshing, and smooth, and quieted her nerves almost as well as that mulled wine from the previous evening. Carmilla composed herself long enough to set the cup down on a windowsill, turning her attention to the letter attached.

 

_Dearest Carmilla,_

_It was so lovely to host you for our annual Yuletide celebration! We hope you’ll be able to make a return visit!_

_But first thing’s first: if you bite her, we will stake you. Consider it a Christmas promise! We have our ways of finding you. Vampyres, though immune to many things, are not impervious to scrying locators._

_Secondly: we really don’t want to stake you, since you have given us no reason to distrust you, and since Danny hasn’t been as enamored with anything in months! We also don’t like to get our hands dirty during the holiday season now that we’ve retired, so consider this your first, and only, pass._

_Thirdly: enjoy your blood. You can keep your secrets all you want, but don’t drag Danny down into anything unseemly. She’s a smart woman, and will figure things out eventually._

_The Happiest of Yuletides!_

_The Birdwells_

“You must be a bigger holiday fan than I gave you credit for, if you can’t even wait three minutes to open a Christmas card,” Danny joked.

“Ha ha…” Carmilla laughed uncertainly, folding the card with the sickeningly cute woodland animals frolicking around a pine tree back into its envelope, and then stuffing it into the deepest recesses of her coat. Veiled threats aside, she looked up into Danny’s considerate eyes and couldn’t shake the thought— _enamored_ —and had to grin at the protective tendencies of mortals and their probably less-than-mortal relations. There may be many Gretchens in the world, but as long as they were countered with Chucks and Ashas, perhaps humanity would be able to push through hate.

Carmilla took another fortifying sip of blood and began strolling down the sidewalk. “This way to the gallery?” she asked.

“Right turn up ahead,” Danny directed, lengthening her already extended stride to keep pace with Carmilla’s speed. “You’re not in a rush, are you? It’s a fair walk.”

“No… just, uhm, ready to start the day?”

“Okay. That sounds like a lie, but I’ll go with it.”

Thankfully, Danny did go with it, and Carmilla curtailed her steps as they approached the bustling foot traffic on the south side of the city centre. Danny would pause every now and then to point out certain architectural highlights of the buildings. Carmilla sipped contentedly at her blood and listened, and learned, and eventually forgot all about the jovial threats issued against her person as she spent the morning exploring Graz, Danny walking steadily at her side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might have set this deadline a little tight. Looks as if we might be getting a chapter a day if I'm gonna finish by Christmas! Thanks so much for reading, you guys!


	9. Chapter 9

So maybe Danny liked playing tour guide more than she’d ever thought she would. Styria, and Graz, in particular, was one of the oldest permanently settled municipalities in Europe. The architectural styles present were incongruous and varied, indicative of its constancy through the ages. And Danny, loathe as she might have been to admit it, went full-on architectural history nerd when talking about fresco paintings, Italian-influenced stucco-decorated facades, and _Franziskanerkirche_ , the Gothic Franciscan monastery that also sported a tower completed in 1643—which, technically, considering the ribbed, vaulted ceilings, were highlights of the _late_ Gothic period—

“Gingersnap, breathe,” Carmilla said, grabbing Danny’s shirt sleeve as she nearly shuffled back into oncoming traffic, trying to point toward one of the spires of the massive building.

“Sorry,” Danny said. “I probably got a little carried away.”

“And you carried me right along with you,” Carmilla flirted, tightening the grip she held on Danny’s shift sleeve before dropping her hand.

Because, yeah… that _had_ to be flirting, Danny thought.

“I hope I haven’t been boring you,” Danny apologized, abashed that she’d so willingly let loose one of the dorkiest elements of her personality to a woman who radiated composure and cool aloofness.

“On the contrary,” Carmilla said. “As I said, it’s been a while since I last visited the city. There was so much… construction going on at the time. When were the final renovations made to the church?”

“The major reconstructions were completed after it got bombed during World War II,” Danny explained. “You want to go inside for a minute? The cloisters are open to the public.”

“I—” Carmilla paused, shrinking back from the shade of the tower. “We’d just walk the garden perimeter? Not the sanctuary?”

Danny stopped alongside the garden wall, picking up on Carmilla’s slight discomfort.

“We don’t have to if you don’t want—”

“No, I… I do,” Carmilla forged ahead. “Let’s go see.”

Danny led Carmilla through the wrought iron side gate of the Franciscan Monastery. This close to Christmas, she expected a few lingering congregants, whether for spiritual contemplation or alms-giving, she didn’t really know. They stepped out from the drafty stone of the cloisters and into the courtyard, awash with fallen snow and dying bushes. It was overcast but windless, the walkways clear, shoveled of residual ice by penitent monks. So the pair dawdled down the paths, Carmilla enraptured with the scenery, and Danny... Danny had already seen much of this place.

Her attention was otherwise occupied.

“It’s a shame you couldn’t come during the spring,” Danny said, stopping beside a thorny bush, prickly and damp. “It’s a rose garden.”

She watched as Carmilla ambled along the crunchy gravel, stopping occasionally to read a placard set atop a display stone. Danny’s attention gravitated toward the archways and she calculated, angles and leverages and materials and the like. She wondered if she could ever create a place dedicated solely to tranquility—to peace.

“Look what I found,” Carmilla called from the far side of the garden, crouched by a mulchy flowerbed.

Danny made her way over and saw Carmilla reaching out, twisting at the stem of a single, stalwart rosebud.

“Wait a sec,” Danny dug into her jacket for her pocketknife and flipped the blade out. She pulled against the stem and succeeded in snipping the miracle flower off of the bush. She marveled, and chuckled her delight at the resilient bud. “Would you look at that!”

It was bright crimson and devoid of blemish, a perfect cup of velvet petal and color against a semi-monochromatic landscape. And Carmilla, with her red hat, red lips, and red flower, seemed almost destined to find it.

“ _Und hat ein_ _Blümlein bracht, mitten im kalten Winter, wohl zu der halben Nacht_.“

“Sorry, didn’t quite catch that,” Danny said, rising from her crouch to look over the kneeling Carmilla, cradling the flower as gently as a newborn.

“German,” Carmilla explained, not looking up.

“I figured as much.”

Carmilla fingered the stem of the flower, drawing her nail along the brackish green skin and halting at the thorns. She peered into the bush, looking for any sibling buds that had likewise been overlooked. She found none, and resumed her elucidation on their unique find:

“Many of the original Christmas carols came from this region,” Carmilla began, almost blandly. “With the conversion to Christendom, they tried to incorporate elements of the pagan calendars, so the transition would be easier. Hence, Christmastide coinciding with Yuletide,” Carmilla placed her hands on her knees and pushed herself up, waving the stem of the flower about like some cursed magic wand. “The song… I believe the English is ‘Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.’ That bit in German, roughly translates…” Carmilla stared down at the rose, running the flesh of her index finger over a thorn, as if daring it to do her harm. “And bears one little flow'r, in midst of coldest winter, at deepest midnight hour.”

“That’s one hearty plant,” Danny watched, transfixed.

“Or one unlucky rose,” Carmilla murmured.

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Danny said, opening her fingers in silent request. Carmilla bestowed the flower upon her, her blasé expression betrayed by her insight concerning the rose-themed carol.

“Then again,” Danny smiled, bringing the flower up toward her nose and sniffing, inhaling the scent of snow and cold and bloom: fierce, distinct, and exhilarating. “Think of that one lucky person, who gets to hold a budding rose in the bleak midwinter,” Danny said, channeling her own knowledge of Christmas songs. “How lucky is that recipient, to realize, even in the cold and severity, especially all the way up here in the Alps…” Danny gestured due north, indicating the high hill of Graz’s Schlossberg, completely covered in snow. “…that something so beautiful can grow in the season of death?”

She handed the long-stemmed rosebud back to Carmilla with a sheepish grin that quickly morphed into a wince.

“Ow,” she muttered, blood welling from the stick of a rogue thorn.

“Or something so dangerous, growing in a garden of good… a weed that needs to be uprooted,” Carmilla mumbled, her pupils blown to dilation, dark and heavy, flicking uncertainly between Danny’s finger and the rose in her grasp.

Danny wiped some of the seeping blood from her finger, one drop staining the snow. “It’s just a little—”

Carmilla snatched Danny’s hand in her own and squeezed her thumb in her grip, tight, secure, forcing their bodies together.

“Hey! It’s—it’s just a scratch,” Danny said quickly, wriggling against Carmilla’s hold. “Hardly dangerous.”

“You shouldn’t underestimate things just because they’re pretty,” Carmilla returned, clench-jawed and tense, refusing to meet Danny’s eyes.

“Hey,” Danny said, ducking down to catch Carmilla’s gaze.

The smaller woman held her hand so tightly she thought she’d lose a digit (this coming from a woman who’d whacked her thumb with a hammer more times than she could count). Danny’s blood flowed to the surface of the broken skin of her callused appendage, such that Danny could feel the warmth leached from the rest of her hand. She placed her other hand atop Carmilla’s own and cupped her palm around it. Danny brought the tangle of fingers and palms and wrists to her mouth and blew against them, warming the bloody flesh further, like Chuck had once done for her. Danny, with all of her energy and stamina and hot-blooded living, didn’t mind sharing her heat.

“I’ll have you know I hold great respect, and if you couldn’t tell from my droning on about the buildings—a rather nerdy interest in the history of pretty things,” Danny said, rubbing Carmilla’s frozen fingers in her own.

Carmilla softened infinitesimally and released Danny’s thumb. The rosebud dangled at her side, the small woman’s hands tinged with a bit of blue due to the cold.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Carmilla scoffed, though there was little malice in it.

“Studium,” Danny said, gesturing around the garden toward the empty benches, the frozen fountain, the low hanging, steel colored clouds. She then nodded toward the rosebud in Carmilla’s hands, and, sucking very quickly on her bleeding thumb, indicated the prick on her finger. “Punctum,” she whispered nervously, biting her lower lip as she stared off toward the cloister arches. “Quite literally.”

Carmilla regarded her attentively, quietly, before turning her focus back to the rose.

“Here,” she said to Danny, trying to pass the flower off. “You should take it. I’d still be wrestling in the brambles without your knife.”

Danny pushed the flower back on her. “It’s Christmas,” was all she said, before nodding back toward the gates. “And your hands are freezing. Maybe fiddling with the stem will warm them up. We should, uh, probably get going if you don’t want your fingers to fall off.”

“Alright,” Carmilla nodded, following dutifully behind.

They took the long way around, Danny pointing out the stone-carved epitaphs of previous noblemen and Styrian soldiers. Men of specific rank and importance had been buried there, their biographical information accompanying their death markers to provide visitors with an idea of what it was like to live during the rule of the Habsburgs and beyond, three or four centuries ago.

“Wait,” Carmilla paused, eyes darting back and forth over the inscriptions in the cold stone. She zeroed in on a marker, chiseled and worn, dedicated to an Austrian Count who’d died all the way back in the 1700s. Carmilla stood statue-still, murmuring to herself in what Danny believed to be German.

“What’s it say?” Danny asked.

“A marker dedicated to Count Matthias,” Carmilla said mechanically. “He was a Habsburg cousin out of Russia, who’d gained his title for standout performance during the Great Turkish war. He led a mounted cavalry offensive during the Battle of Vienna.”

“My war history’s a little rusty,” Danny admitted, looking down at the plaque over Carmilla’s shoulder. She watched as Carmilla extended a reverent hand to trace the Roman numerals carved into the stone. “When did all this go down?”

“Late seventeenth century,” Carmilla said, not even reading the plaque. “The Battle of Vienna was in late summer, maybe autumn… 1683… he’d left so suddenly, and I didn’t understand… I didn’t even know he’d…”

“Carmilla?”

Carmilla tugged her hat off and readjusted her hair, flicked the collar of her coat up against her neck. She grunted and unbuttoned one of the bottom buttons on her coat, allowing her to kneel before the placard. She placed the rosebud on the stone directly beneath the marker and shrugged, before shaking her head and repositioning her hat.

“You like architecture. Call me a history nerd, Cinna-stick,” Carmilla said airily, rising with her trademark smirk.

“History, philosophy, photography, linguist—” Danny listed, willing to change topics if Carmilla so desired. “And a coffee drinker. I bet you’re never at a loss for conversation.”

“Honestly, I’m a big fan of silence,” Carmilla said. “But when there are interesting people to talk to, I don’t find dialogue so tedious.”

Danny thought about all the hammering, the buzz of the power tools, the phone calls, even the drip of a leaky faucet. She’d not considered it much before, but she, too, was rather a fan of soundlessness.

“I know what you mean,” Danny said, pushing open the gate toward the sidewalk. The noon bell rang from the tower as they exited, sloshing through the snowy mush on the streets. “It’s only a five-minute walk from here. We’ve just got to cross the river.”

“Okay,” Carmilla nodded, and they walked the rest of the way to Kunsthaus in pleasurable, companionable silence.

 

* * *

 

 

“So I guess this is you,” Danny said, as they moseyed up to the front entrance of the Kuntshaus Gallery.

Carmilla was sure Danny would call the building an architectural feat of immense achievement, but to her more traditional sensibilities, the greenish blue globule of a gallery favored an extraterrestrial bovine intestine. It was massive, an eyesore amongst the patterned red roofs and stone; but the space ultimately housed the masters collection Carmilla had been hoping to see for close to a decade. And if she had already skirted mother’s radar for this long with an entertaining dalliance in the form of a leggy red-head and her jolly Christmas crew, another two hours wandering the rooms of a photography gallery wouldn’t really matter in the long run. Either way, she was bound to be bound; if she were lucky, it’d just be in shackles in the boiler room and not inside a coffin again.

“Yes,” Carmilla agreed, taking stock of the turnstiles at the entrance to the building.

It was midday, so the foot traffic was pretty heavy. She’d need to employ some supernatural speed to bypass the ten Euro entrance fee, considering she didn’t have a coin to her name.

“Looks like I can stop monopolizing your time,” Carmilla said, lingering, for reasons she didn’t care to over think, outside the gallery with Danny. “I… I don’t get to, or, well, I don’t _have_ to say this much, which is why I’m particularly poor at expressing it. But I’m truly… truly grateful for all of your kindness.” She nearly felt herself gagging over the words, so allergic she seemed to sentiment. “Honestly, I’ve never expected that from strangers.”

“Well, maybe one day you’ll return the favor,” Danny answered.

“Maybe,” Carmilla grinned painfully, knowing that somewhere out there, some poor girl (the kind of girl Danny would help in an instant) was about to be snatched off the streets and made to disappear forever. Some favor she did the world, sitting removed and gloomy atop her uncomfortable throne.

“As much as I—oh,” Carmilla started, shifting behind Danny’s much taller frame in front of the Kuntshaus. “Actually, uh, would you like to go for luncheon?” Carmilla asked, eyes locked on the two Changeling security guards she’d spotted at the end of the block, heading directly for the entrance of the gallery.

Danny nearly guffawed. “ _Luncheon_?”

“Grab a bite,” Carmilla stumbled over the modern vernacular, her attention disproportionately divided.

Mother must have found that brochure and connected the dots with her request for some alone time in the limousine—and thus sent her specialized force of hell-beasts turned security guards after her precious princess. She’d sent the Changelings to patrol the city hot spots, effectively intercepting Carmilla before she could even set foot on the gallery floor.

Lilita had indulged her interests enough to send her to university back when photography first made a splash in the 70s, but had never relented in recent years for a return stint, despite the advancements made in film production and development. Even when she’d attended a Swiss institution, and a German institution, and an English, a Russian, a Japanese, etc., Carmilla rarely got into majors outside of political science; her philosophies and languages were a must, her photography and art history courses necessary electives for refinement—a quality a princess should possess in bucket loads. But now, ducking behind Danny, Carmilla regretted never balking mother’s demands completely and majoring in something useful, like fashion, so she could cleverly disguise herself in plain clothes; or athletics, so she could outrun and outmaneuver those supernatural bloodhounds on her mother’s staff.

“What about the gallery?” Danny said suspiciously, about to turn over her shoulder.

“Well,” Carmilla reached out and grabbed Danny’s hand, and it panged her and guilted her, the way Danny’s pulse picked up and her face melted into a smile at the touch.

“That is, uh,” Carmilla ran her finger over the side of Danny’s palm, quickly enough to be inadvertent, but distinct enough to be felt. She dropped Danny’s hand and looked away sheepishly, playing the damsel.

“It’s just our little detour took a while, and it’s after noon already. You can show me how much the city centre has changed,” she looked up through heavy lids and allowed her thrall to seep from her voice: an osmotic pull of attention.

God, she couldn’t believe she was doing this again. And to a woman she truly _liked_ , no less.

“Are you sure?” Danny asked once more, the Changelings stalking ever closer.

The guards looked no different than average humans, but their moldy odor and the glimmer of concealment magic over their disfigured faces were unmistakable to Carmilla; she’d been tailed by those creatures for long enough to know when they’d caught wind of her.

“You just seem—”

“Hungry,” Carmilla answered quickly, dragging Danny and leaning, rather more heavily than necessary, against the handywoman’s arm.

She was aiming to cloud her own scent, the second-hand coat and cap providing a distracting first line of defense. But Danny’s smell: earthy, sweaty, and woody, like saw dust shavings and the tang of paint primer. And underneath her clothing, some vanilla and cinnamon body scrub that was just _unfair_ for Carmilla, plus a peppermint shampoo infused in that waterfall of cedar-scarlet hair.

Carmilla was practically salivating. She urged Danny around the corner and dropped her hand, which had Danny halting abruptly in her pace. She watched as Danny peered back around the corner, then cast a far-too-smart-for-her-own-good appraisal back at Carmilla.

“Is everything alright?” Danny murmured quietly, ducking back to their side of the corner.

“Of course,” Carmilla insisted. “It’s just… look, so maybe I didn’t want to admit how lost I got yesterday,” she lied, her insides churning like a furnace stoked with a hot poker. “And maybe I didn’t eat, because of the whole… wallet thing. I know we ate breakfast only three or four hours ago, but I’m famished.”

It was flimsy, and hurried, but it was the best she could do without confessing to being followed.

“And your sudden paranoia combined with two bulky dudes coming this way—”

“I’m not _paranoid_ , Gingersnap,” Carmilla shifted tactics, back to caustic. “It’s just not easy damning my pride and asking for a handout, alright?” She crossed her arms over her chest and huddled against the back wall of the museum, wishing stupidly for some saving grace to get her off of this block. It would bode better for her health to come crawling back to mother of her own pathetic accord, rather than have the Changelings pluck her off the street like some rebellious teenager sneaking off to a rager.

Not to mention, it would leave Danny out of this mess as well.

“Fine,” Danny said, peeking back around the corner. “Let’s walk.”

“Where to?” Carmilla murmured, curious, but reluctant to question her good fortune.

“Three blocks west I’ve got two guys putting up panels in the back room of a pub. I need an excuse to check in. Plus, those beefy suits you claim _aren’t_ following you are coming this way,” she explained, scuttling into a back alley. Danny glanced over her shoulder and maneuvered Carmilla so that she walked in front of Danny’s large frame, effectively blocking any view from behind.

“I told you, I’m not—”

“Going to tell me the reason you’re being followed, that’s fine,” Danny said. “I’ve been on this side of a chase before, and I recognize the tactics, alright, princess?”

Carmilla stutter-stepped and nearly fell headlong into a dumpster.

“If this is you walking on uneven pavement, I’d love to see your version of _stealth_ ,” Danny whispered, hauling her up from the lip of the bin by her jacket collar.

And it took all of Carmilla’s remaining mental capacity to piece together that Gingersnap was merely retaliating against her war of nicknames. Carmilla had made it readily apparent that she couldn’t navigate, spoke like an elitist, and had a difficult time putting one foot in front of the other on a common sidewalk.

Princess… definitely.

They emerged from their shortcut into heavy foot traffic two blocks west. The detour through the alley likely did wonders for covering her scent from the Changelings, but Danny’s self-assumed correctness over their being pursued heightened the stakes for someone who’d just been threatened by Gingerbread’s mysterious magical acquaintances. The last thing she needed was to drag some scrumptious morsel of noble intentions and striking cheekbones into her family drama. And with Chuck and Asha onto her secret, as well as the Changelings nipping at her heels, she had to watch out for an attack on two fronts.

“You still really want food?” Danny asked. They slowed their pace, waiting for the light to turn as they lost themselves in the peopled sea of Styrian pedestrians.

“Yes,” Carmilla admitted.

“Whatcha feeling?” Danny asked breezily. “It’s colder than a cell in a Gulag camp today. I could go for some soup. Here, take a left on this block,” Danny said, tangling her fingers in Carmilla’s and tugging her around a corner. This time when their hands disconnected Carmilla noted the loss; like a favored glove or scarf being shed, when you still craved the warmth.

“I’m—what ever’s good. I’m not picky.”

“Just as long as it’s off the street, right?” Danny asked.

“Yes.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“You can do whatever you like. I’m not stopping you.”

“Will you answer me honestly?” Danny tried again, scanning the menu in the window of a run-of-the-mill café on a side street.

“Probably not,” Carmilla mumbled, her own eyes locked on the brass doorknob. She couldn’t stomach the disappointment she knew she’d glimpse in Danny’s face.

“Were those men really after you?” Danny asked, her fingers brushing against Carmilla’s wrist.

And the warmth was so beguiling that Carmilla let herself feel comforted, if only for a moment.

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go incognito,” Danny managed, opening the door to the café and allowing Carmilla to stroll in ahead of her. “They’ve got a cream of carrot and coriander on the menu that I plan on guzzling like Gatorade. Here, to the back. I’ll sit facing the door.”

“You’re not going to ask me about the Change—about the men?” Carmilla asked, as they sidled into an empty booth.

Danny shrugged and upturned the mug at her place setting, the ceramic rattling against the saucer. “You’ll tell me if you want to,” she said, nodding to acknowledge the waiter across the floor. “You want tea?”

“Tea is taken after the meal, Gingersnap,” Carmilla chided playfully.

“Live a little, Holiday,” Danny said, smirking her challenge across the table.

Carmilla would have laughed, if only she hadn’t been so crestfallen by the sentiment.

“Hold up,” Danny said, checking the buzzing phone at her hip. “Awwwww, score!” Danny seemed to have acquired some form of degenerative-motor disorder, for she preceded to punch the air thrice with her fist clenched; she seemed very happy about attacking the atmosphere.

“What is it?” Carmilla asked, unable to control her interest due to Danny’s ridiculously excited outburst.

“Skylights are in,” Danny’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. “And I won the bid on a property I put in for two weeks ago,” Danny explained, holstering her phone once she finished reading the message.

It was interesting, Danny’s excitement for tangibles, and her detachment from technology. She had offered the mobile to Carmilla at their first meeting as a tool, but not once had Carmilla noticed Danny staring at its screen, like so many other mortals she observed. No, every time she caught Danny’s eye, Danny seemed to be staring right back at her.

“And they just gave me clearance for initial assessment,” Danny said, sliding the laminated menu across the table.

“What does that mean?”

“It means eat up, ‘cause we’ve got to walk all the way back down to the south side to get my van,” Danny answered, blue eyes sparkling, gears in her head turning. “We’ll go check out the pub around the corner first, but I’m gonna need my tool box.”

“Initial assessment?” Carmilla questioned, perusing the menu. “What could you possibly fix during an initial assessment?”

Danny was about to speak before she caught herself—stalled—and then nabbed the menu from Carmilla’s hands, running her fingers over her hair in a nervous fidget.

Wow. And Carmilla thought _she_ was a bad liar.

“Better safe than sorry,” Danny non-answered, then looked up as the waiter finally made his way toward their booth with a steaming kettle of tea. “Can’t have my ankle sinking through a random floorboard. Better decide quick, ‘cause I want to get back on the pavement.”

“I would if I still had the menu,” Carmilla remarked, snide and superior.

“Oh, sorry,” Danny said, passing the menu over, and then fumbling with Carmilla’s own mug. “Uh, two teas please,” Danny said to the patient waiter. “And a water. And I’m going with the creamed carrot soup. Carmilla, you figured out what you want?”

“Yes,” Carmilla replied, peering conspiratorially over the lip of the food list. “But Gingersnaps aren’t on the menu,” Carmilla chanced, while Danny turned beet-red and sputtered over her tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy howdy. This is a long-butt chapter. Probably could've been split into two different pieces given the pov and tone shifts, but I'm trying to get all this churned out relatively quickly. I'm noticing now that I've committed myself to writing about 10k words short of a novel in just over a month. I don't know where I'm finding the time, but it's happening. 
> 
> That being said, to anyone's who has stuck with me for this overly plotty, not-the-best-writing I've produced Christmas whirlwind, y'all da real MVPs. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!!!


	10. Chapter 10

“Okay, uh, you can just stay in the car,” Danny directed, fumbling about in the front seat of her van. She stretched over the console to grab her box… just in case.

“Why?” Carmilla asked. “I don’t plan on throwing my body weight against any load-bearing pillars.”

“First off,” Danny said, withdrawing the keys from the ignition and shoving them into her pocket. “Kudos to you for knowing about load-bearing beams. But secondly, it’s not you. It’s the house,” Danny said warily.

It was a beautiful property, and rather larger, more secluded than most homes she usually restored. This mid-century Alpine house was situated a good three hundred yards off the road, up a gravelly drive that shrouded the view of the estate from passing motorists. The report she’d read when she’d placed the bid indicated that the property had been abandoned for seven years, which was more than enough time for some beast or another to turn the space into a winter’s den.

The demarcated boundaries backed up to several acres of heavily wooded terrain, so the likelihood of a forest creature barreling out of the woods and into the house increased tenfold; but still, the building was relatively well-kept, and had a spacious, fenced-in backyard. It would be perfect for a family with multiple children; those who valued the space and fresher air of a rural feel, just thirty minutes outside the cluster and bustle of the city center.

“Like I said, the structural integrity might be compromised,” Danny mumbled again, beginning to doubt her decision to bring Carmilla with her.

“Which is why you put a bid on it?” Carmilla asked, twisting a screwdriver between her fingers.

“I can fix it. Just have to make sure it’s up to code before I send a crew in,” Danny said, opening the door and climbing out.

“Shouldn’t you take a hard-hat?” Carmilla questioned, one brow arched to such degrees it looked like an inverted horseshoe. “You know… for ‘safety’?”

“I’m asking for one for Christmas,” Danny returned, shutting the door and speaking through the window. “Right back!” she said, shuffling backwards toward the stone steps of the building, pointing a warning at Carmilla. “Don’t move!”

Danny strode across the porch and pushed the key in the lock. She turned the knob and opened the sturdy front door, stepping across the threshold into a dusty, but, from the looks of things, relatively well-maintained house.

Crouching down, she flipped the metal catches on her toolbox and pulled out the removable top portion of the caddie (the innocuous segment with a hammer and a Phillips head and wrenches and nuts and nails). Into the depths of the toolbox she delved, extracting her dirk and latching it to her belt. She also stowed some powders of varying potencies and utilities—some were poisonous, and some for mere distraction during hasty getaways—as well as a compact dart gun with heavy tranquilizer rounds already loaded into the chamber.

She’d asked about the efficacy of the drugs online from a guy Chuck had hooked her up with. It was a fast-acting concentration of chemicals that was known to bring down bull-elephants. Why Chuck knew a guy with access to those kinds of drugs, Danny could only guess. Chuck had probably done some performance magic at a pharmaceutical rep convention. Whatever… at least she got the darts, fully loaded. And she’d only had to use them twice so far.

She much preferred wailing on monsters with a two-by-four, and doing a bit of slicing and dicing with the dagger her sorority had gifted her during undergraduate commencement ceremonies. But she had a date—uh, friend in the car, and the last thing she needed was to emerge from her newest property reminiscent of Carrie at the senior prom.

She started at the top of the house and worked her way down, shining her flashlight into darkened corners and down musty corridors; two stories and a basement, and a crawl space that constituted an attic. No pixie nests or signs of termites, no cursing banshees or water damage. All in all, what was shaping up to be one of the easiest renos she’d need to perform.

There was, noticeably, a draft coming in off the back hallway from a shattered window with glass littering the interior. Probably just some kids, exploring the old creepy house at the end of the lane. An easy fix. She’d need to replace the worn stripping around the doors, possibly look into double-paneled windows to tout energy efficiency on resale, gut one wall to double check the insulation, test the radiators, have the chimney inspected—

“Hello.”

Danny jumped, brandishing the light and whipping about.

“Woah there, Red,” Carmilla said sluggishly, posted up against the doorjamb to the kitchen, amused little smirk plastered on her face.

“I thought I told you to wait in the car,” Danny said sternly, shining her flashlight in Carmilla’s eyes.

Carmilla recoiled and grimaced, straightening ash-white fingers against the light beam.

“And I obviously didn’t listen,” Carmilla countered. “I got bored. Besides, I’m usually the one telling people what to do. I didn’t appreciate the role reversal.”

“Look, I’m sorry I dragged you out here,” Danny continued, annoyed, as she had been yesterday morning (had it only been yesterday?) at Carmilla’s heedlessness. “I know it’s not exactly street-chase-exciting, but you’re not experienced with walking around construction sites. There’s broken glass back there.”

“This is an abandoned house, not a construction site.”

“Even so, you’re a liability,” Danny harrumphed, shoving past Carmilla and into the kitchen, approaching the cellar door.

“Then why did you bring me?”

“Because you seemed like you wanted out of the city,” Danny growled, jingling the downstairs knob. “And you didn’t exactly object.”

Danny extracted the skeleton keys she’d picked up from the estate office before driving out here, trying and failing with each of the three in the set.

“That’s weird,” Danny murmured, then reached into her tool belt for a lock pick and tension hammer.

“What?” Carmilla asked, slinking over to lean atop a dirtied kitchen counter.

“Cellar door’s locked,” Danny explained, ticking away at the tumblers inside the lock. “They gave me all the keys to the property at the bidding office, so this seems a little—ah, got it,” Danny said, twisting the anchor down and rotating the knob. She tugged against the door and shafts of light flooded the stairwell; the scent of mildew and musty disuse shot up toward the landing like a bullet to the brain, motes of dust fighting gravity as they trickled onto the steps in the shafted streams of light.

“I just gotta do a sweep down here and make sure the foundation’s stable. Then we can head back into the city.”

“Okay,” Carmilla said, pushing off from the counter and gliding behind Danny.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like? I’m coming with you,” Carmilla answered.

“Why?” Danny asked, still rather ticked. “I’ve already gotten in trouble for not having a hardhat, but I’m hardly going to break my neck on a staircase.”

“You’re my ride,” Carmilla answered blandly. “And I don’t know how to drive.”

“At all?” Danny asked, one hand on the staircase railing, the other clutching her flashlight. “Just stay there, okay?”

Carmilla tromped down the staircase after Danny and halted two steps above her. As Danny shone the light beam around clusters of forgotten furniture, she felt Carmilla’s breath on her neck, hot, even, and infuriating.

“Do you ever do as you’re told?” Danny asked, taking a careful step onto the cool concrete of the basement floor.

The space was in good condition, no cracks running through the cement blocks, no chipped or decimated wood hunks blasted off of the support beams, no smell of rot from underground seepage. There were some leftover furniture pieces preserved beneath a series of dirtied drop cloths: coffee tables and sofas and a dining set for eight, from the looks of the shapes underneath the material. In the nearest corner stood a bookcase, a piece Danny might just have to commandeer for her own use; she could sand, stain, and chuck all of her novels from undergrad onto the shelves for display. They were currently unloved and tucked away beneath her bed in a couple of milk crates, the only storage she could afford after she gave up her city job.

“If I did, no one would have to send big men out to find me,” Carmilla answered her previous inquiry, which shut Danny up about the whole ‘following her into the musty basement’ thing.

Then again, Danny thought, Carmilla could very well be an escaped convict, given her pursuers. Or a victim with key testimony, on the run from her handlers in witness protection. Or—

“Wait,” Carmilla grabbed her bicep, so Danny dropped the flashlight to her side. “Did you hear that?” Carmilla asked.

“No,” Danny muttered, tired of tiny, over-suspicious femme fatales ignoring and then bothering her when she was busy mentally cataloging furniture acquisitions. “Probably just a—”

Carmilla tackled Danny to the ground as a giant, obsidian mass the size of a boulder crashed against the wall where the pair had just been standing. The flashlight went careening from Danny’s grasp, and the entire basement morphed into a maze of half-shadows and chair legs and splinters, something—an undeniably _ginormous_ something—slipping through the abandoned household’s detritus. Carmilla landed firmly atop Danny, a position Danny would have considered quite forward if the other woman hadn’t just saved her from certain internal hemorrhaging.

“Holy—”

“Shh!” Carmilla commanded, wrapping her fingers over Danny’s mouth as they lay, barely breathing, on the basement floor.

Danny could hear it, whatever _it_ was, rumbling and purring beyond one row of obliterated furniture. It seemed too large to have fit through that shattered window, but the glass, broken from the outside and covering the floor _inside…_ there was more to this than some animal gone exploring for warmth near a water-heater.

And then there was Carmilla, stock still and silent, her nose pressed against Danny’s cheek, her elbow resting on Danny’s clavicle, her hips—Danny gulped—half atop Danny’s pelvis and those eyes, glistening remotely in the darkness, narrowing with every shuffle of bestial limb mere feet over.

Danny carefully moved the hand clutching Carmilla’s torso down to her waist, which had those dark brown eyes jittering and _winking_ and—was that smirk back?!—the smaller woman rolling her hips with molasses-speed into the touch.

Danny shoved her lips into Carmilla’s ear and whispered: “I need to get my _dagger_.”

Carmilla dipped her head into her neck, which Danny interpreted as a nod; the smaller woman shifted her weight to accommodate Danny’s groping near her tool belt. Danny felt the hilt, cool and familiar in her palm, and unsheathed the piece with a silence-shattering _shink_!

The noise was magnified in the quiet, rousing the beast from its lurking sentinel behind a battered sofa. Danny saw a form in the blackness catapult over the couch with a snarling roar. She held Carmilla close, dumbfounded to see the reflection of scales and the sheen of matted fur in the weak light of the stairwell.

Danny clapped her free hand around Carmilla’s waist and rolled them over and away from the wall, tossing Carmilla behind her and turning to catch the maw of the beast with a swiping slash of her dirk. She was on her feet in an instant, her knees bent in a crouch and her dagger brandished in front of her, Carmilla sprawled inelegantly beneath her feet.

“What are you—?!”

“Seriously, this time—” Danny said, making wide arcs with her dirk in the air before her, “ _don’t move!_ ”

The creature’s roar faded to a hiss as Danny caught its skull with the flat of the short blade. It faltered in its charge enough for Danny to draw the tranquilizer pistol and release two darts into its hide, an unfathomable exterior of skin and scale that reeked of decay—of rotten, fetid flesh and curdled blood. The creature staggered back into the beam of Danny’s discarded flashlight, the silhouette more ghastly in its revelation than the mystery Danny had concocted in the darkness.

It wasn’t a tiger, exactly, nor was it a miniature dinosaur… one limb was most definitely an arm, simian-like and bulky, but it wasn’t the same length as all the other limbs. There was a prehensile tail, maybe, or an extra foot, completely comprised of bone. And the tusks, two ivory white incisors jutting skyward and nearly into the beast’s eyeballs because of an underbite so severe it distorted the creature’s skull—they might as well have belonged to some prehistoric saber tooth.

Danny marshaled her courage and attacked, sliding to the floor as the beast lunged. She thrust her dagger straight up and caught the not-dragon-tiger in the torso, twisting and wrenching the knife from its bulky chest cavity. The creature landed in a heap just above Danny’s head and managed to rake its talons across her shoulder, shredding her shirt and drawing blood. Danny knew the lacerations were deep, but her adrenaline was pumping too fast for her to care; she kicked out from beneath the weight of the beast and stabbed it in the gut.

At this point, the tranquilizers had to have taken effect, because the monster only swatted back weakly and glared with menacing crimson pupils. Danny stabbed again, and again, finally nicking something internal that sent blood spewing; her skin was speckled with prune-like, coagulated drops of stinging, geysering liquid. She blinked against the slippery wetness and felt her hand crunch a rib, dismantling the innards of the monster and effectively immobilizing it. She heard a final, gurgling, choking _squelch_ from the muzzle of the beast as she came down hard with her dagger and twisted; and then the thing ceased all movement.

Danny gasped against the blood on her lips, her chest heaving in the quiet. She felt hot, steamy, and humid, as if someone had dunked her scarf into boiling water and wrapped it round her neck and pulled, tugging sharper, tightening some strange noose of aggression she never knew she kept looped around her throat.

And it was all so very bloody, and so very dark.

“Danny?” she heard, off to her left, though the noise was muffled by the rush of blood in her ears.

“Red, are you alright?”

Danny heard her dagger clatter to the ground as she tried to stand too quickly, the blood draining from her brain and sinking toward her toes; she vaguely recalled the descent forward, and hoping she wouldn’t break her nose, as she fainted and fell to the ground.


	11. Chapter 11

Danny shot up with a gasp, scrabbling at her side for her dirk.

“Easy there, Xena,” Carmilla chided, placing a gentle hand against her uninjured shoulder to guide her back to her supine position.

Danny was on a table, a table that had definitely not been in the unfurnished kitchen of the property the first time around. She recalled the dining set beneath the sheets in the basement… the basement where she’d gone toe-to-toe with one of the largest beasts she’d ever faced—

“I-i-i-is it… is it dead?” she managed to ask, wincing at the sting in her shoulder. The lashes burned like spoonfuls of powdered cayenne, ground and rubbed into each open scratch; but the wound was covered, shoddily wrapped but clean, with padded gauze that must’ve come from the first aid kit at the edge of the table.

“The tsoglav?” Carmilla asked, dabbing at Danny’s bicep with an antiseptic wipe.

“Ouch!” Danny sat up again, rocking into a propped position on her elbows. Her ribs ached, almost like a cannonball had rammed her in the gut.

“Don’t squirm so much,” Carmilla rolled her eyes, then shut the first aid kit. “Of course, I should know better than to expect good behavior from someone who throws herself at a damned hellbeast conjured from the _Bestiary_ ,” Carmilla rose to double-check the bandages at Danny’s shoulder. “With all the blood, I was certain you were going to need stitches, but…” Carmilla smoothed the gauze back down over Danny’s shoulder blade and returned to her chair. “Well, I don’t think you’ll need those now.”

“What the—?” Danny stared, then double-taked at her shoulder, noticing that she’d been stripped of her hoodie and over shirt.

Her tank top, bloodstained and shredded, hung over the back of one of those chairs from the dining set. The contents of her tool belt, the dagger, the powders, her hammer and lock pick and other assorted odds and ends, lay in a haphazard trail from the table to the landing at the cellar door. Danny wagered she’d find her dart gun somewhere down there among the furniture and drop cloths and dead monster carcasses.

As lucidity returned, so did sensation: she was freezing. The hairs on her arms stood on end because she was clad in naught but her sports bra and jeans, laid out like some serial killer’s prize on top of a kitchen table in an abandoned (apparently haunted) Alpine mansion.

“You’re not freaking out,” Danny said, still blinking herself back to coherence.

“You’ve gone and nearly broken your shoulder,” Carmilla argued, passing Danny’s hoodie over to her. “How would my freaking out be beneficial in this situation?”

“That was a… there was… I killed that thing and you—”

“Made sure you were still breathing. I don’t like owing anyone anything,” Carmilla answered, fussing with the adhesive butterfly bandages on Danny’s forearm. “And I’m already indebted more than I wish to be to you.”

Danny watched Carmilla tinker with the medical tape, which seemed as secure as it ever would be.

“How did I get up here?”

“Carried you.”

“And the first aid kit?”

“Found it in your van. I assumed you weren’t stupid, given your chosen profession,” Carmilla snarked, though she carefully brushed back a lock of hair that had fallen against Danny’s shoulder. “Yet you still don’t have a hard-hat—”

“What about the table?” Danny asked, her head swimming with questions. “It wasn’t up here before.”

“Brought it from downstairs. I’m no medical professional, but I know not to put people down on the germ-infested floor when they’re like to die from exsanguination.”

Danny glanced down the table, the thick wooden legs carved and curled and elegant, but foremost, _heavy_. “This thing seats ten people, easy.”

“So?”

“So how the hell did you get it up those stairs?”

“Same way I did you, Gingersnap,” Carmilla answered. “Carried it.”

“I don’t under—what about the—”

“Hell beast’s dead, nearly took you with it,” Carmilla summarized, flopping back in one of the chairs from the dining set Danny had planned on selling to an auction house. The table and the chair were now bloodstained; depreciating value and making her restoration work a whole lot harder. “That was a dumb move, Gingersnap.”

“What's a sot—tsogle—?”

“A _tsoglav_ ,” Carmilla clarified. “You think you’d be more aware of the creatures you banish to fields of sulfur and brimstone.”

“What the… what are you talking about?” Danny asked. “What are you _doing_?”

Carmilla opened her eyes wider and fixed Danny with a stare that might’ve said, what-does-it-look-like-you-sawdust-for-brains-carpenter?

“I’m wrapping up your arm… because you almost ended up like the Black Knight in that Monty Python film,” Carmilla said slowly, as if Danny were a particularly daft student, unable to grasp the concept of adding one and one. “Thought we might need to check you for a concussion—”

“Why the hell aren’t you running for the hills? Did you call the police? Or, uh... animal control?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong in giving you more credit than you deserve,” Carmilla sighed, exasperated. “But I thought that after our episode with those men in the city you’d have figured that I have no intention of involving the authorities, or tipping them off as to my whereabouts.”

Danny finally worked her way into a sitting position and gripped the edges of the table to make sure she hadn’t gone insane. Carmilla’s aversion to mortal authorities was the last thing on her mind.

“But I just killed a _monster_ ,” Danny emphasized the final word, punctuating it with shaking, outstretched hands.

Carmilla, as was her custom, looked bored to tears.

“Yes, and?”

...

...

...

“THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS MONSTERS!”

Carmilla scoffed, and propped her black boots up on the table with an irreverent sort of swagger.

“Which is a lie, given that you just stabbed one to death,” Carmilla shot back. “And by the way, you’re going to need to shower. I could only get so much of the blood off without delving into places unmentionable.”

“How on earth are you so calm about this?” Danny asked, turning so her legs hung off the side of the table.

She held the hoodie over her chest for modesty, and, for some tangible source of comfort. Perhaps she really had misjudged Carmilla. She knew nothing about this woman other than that she waxed poetic about photography and held a reluctant affinity for Christmas. For all Danny knew, Carmilla could be attacked in basements everyday! This might just be old hat for her.

“You survived, I survived, and you liberated a tortured soul. Now, what I want to know is,” Carmilla let her feet drop and leaned closer to the table, propping her chin on her fists and bugging her eyes conspiratorially, like they shared an indecent secret: “You weren’t surprised to find the tsoglav here. You’re more worried about me _not_ being worried. So, Gingersnap, my question is: how long have you fancied yourself a monster killer?”

Danny gaped, unable to speak, because somehow _she_ was the one undergoing questioning, despite the fact that Carmilla’s behavior was certainly the more bizarre of the two.

“I… I…” Danny began, twitching a little under the scrutiny. It was still cold, so she moved to tug her hoodie on, but stopped—firstly, for the dull ache in her shoulder, and secondly, because she looked down to find Carmilla’s anchor necklace resting over the branded emblem of her navy sports bra.

“Why am I wearing this?” Danny asked, holding the amulet between her fingers.

“You weren’t wearing much else,” Carmilla redirected slyly, reaching to remove the piece from around Danny’s neck.

As the chain slipped overhead, the throbbing in her shoulder intensified; likely from all the moving about and the incongruous answers Carmilla deemed sufficient for Danny’s line of inquiry.

“Back to my question. How long have you been taking out heeby-jeebie-beasties?” Carmilla asked, tossing the chain back over her own head.

“I…” Danny began, wincing at the pain in her shoulder. “Since college,” Danny said, reaching for the first aid kit to scrounge around for some Ibuprofen.

“Hobby?” Carmilla asked.

“Started that way,” Danny shrugged, but even then, the up-down elevator of her shoulder movements had her clutching her the bandages with her opposite hand. “Ow!”

“Hey,” Carmilla rose from her chair, mockery fading to legitimate concern for the briefest of moments.

Carmilla placed her hand over Danny’s and squeezed, gently, looking down at the table.

“Are you going to take these?” Carmilla murmured, reaching for the single packet of pills.

“I’ve got a water bottle in the van,” Danny said. “I can’t dry swallow them.”

“Shall I retrieve it, then?” Carmilla asked, distracted.

“No, we… we should probably get back on the road. I promised my crew I’d be back to install those sky lights before close of business.”

“There’s no way you’re lifting anything above your head, let alone installing something that requires drilling holes in the ceiling.”

“I’ve gotta at least be back to supervise,” Danny said, standing, her legs feeling like pasta noodles boiled al dente.

“Will you make it, Red?” Carmilla asked, stepping towards her.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Danny said, moving forward—then immediately stumbling into Carmilla’s side. Danny clutched at the smaller woman’s shoulders and might’ve tugged on the edges of her hair…which didn’t seem to bother Carmilla in the slightest, judging by that vexatious, maddening, hotter-than-hell smirk.

“Hey there, Legs,” Carmilla purred, grasping hold of Danny’s struggling (read, _utterly mortified_ ) form. “You’re sure you’re capable of driving?”

“I’m not standing up when I’m driving. I just got a little light headed, ‘s all,” Danny mumbled, trying to extricate herself from Carmilla’s embrace. “And at least it’s my left shoulder. I can manage steering one-handed.”

“I’d like to know what else you can do with one hand.”

“Okay, what is this?” Danny said, the suggestive remarks and nicknames and jewelry and disinterest in the supernatural elevating the weird to an entirely different level.

And Danny had just shoved a ceremonial Scottish fighting blade in between the ribs of a half-dragon-demon!

“What’s what?” Carmilla returned.

“The flirting and the insults and the disregarding _everything_ I say—”

“You’d be dead if I hadn’t disregarded at least _some_ of what you said.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you can be extremely infuriating?”

“Yes, but not while shirtless and lacking heat in the dead of winter. Let’s get that hoodie on without tearing your rotator cuff, shall we?”

Carmilla wrangled Danny into the loose hoodie with nary a grumble. But, that was more because Danny was trying not to insult the woman who’d taken the time to bandage and carry her broken body up from the bottom of an abandoned house. If Carmilla had been all bad, she would’ve left Danny downstairs to bleed out or freeze to death. She was still terribly mysterious and condescending, but at least not outright _evil_.

“How about this?” Carmilla asked, walking close enough to Danny that the taller woman would be able to lean on her, should she need a prop.

Which Danny would most certainly _not_ be doing. No way. She turned around and cast one final glance at the interior of the property before digging in her pockets for her keys and locking up. She had a relatively short list of upkeep for this house; but the one major thing, bolded, italicized and highlighted, was to perform another purge for anything creepy once her shoulder healed up. She didn’t like that broken window anymore than the beast in the cellar.

“You tell me all about your history as Xena: Ginger Monster Slayer,” Carmilla bargained, “And I’ll tell you about the tsoglav.”

“I feel like you’re getting a lot more information out of me than I’m getting out of you,” Danny grumbled, reaching across her body with her good arm so that she could shut the door. “Oh, crap, I forgot my tool bel—”

“It’s in the back,” Carmilla said, now playing with Danny’s dagger.

“When’d you get that?”

“Picked it up when we left.”

“I didn’t see you get my stuff. It was all over the kitchen.”

“You need to pay more attention if you’re planning on ridding high-resale estates of evil monsters, bean pole.”

Danny cranked the car, unwilling to argue after her rather harrowing episode.

“So, tsoglav?” Danny asked, yanking the gearshift into drive.

“It’s in the _Bestiary_ ,” Carmilla began, staring pointedly out of the passenger’s side window. “With what I wager you face in your line of work, you could do with a copy.”

“It’s a book?”

“A cursed tome transcribed by a lackey in the Underworld, if the introduction is to be believed.”

“So you’ve read it?” Danny pried.

“Hardly. Anyone who reads the text itself turns into one of the beasts within its pages.”

“Then how do you know what’s in the introduction?”

Carmilla didn't answer, instead twirling the tip of the dagger against the tip of her middle finger. It was like she was deliberately showing how much power she had, as well as how much restraint. She pressed until her skin dipped like an inverted triangle point, but never drew blood.

“My guess is some poor wretch realized something awful was about to happen to him, and broke in through that window. Locked himself up in the cellar before his change, so he wouldn't hurt anyone," Carmilla explained. "Sometimes that's the safer option."

"What a lonely way to go," Danny said.

"Better than killing the people you love... How much longer to the city, Red?” Carmilla asked, pulling her favored Barthes selection out of her pocket and flipping through it. “Hauling your heavy ass up those stairs can tucker a girl out, you know?”

“Twenty minutes or so,” Danny mumbled, irritated with Carmilla, and, irritated with herself for remaining so intrigued. “Get some shut-eye while you can, if you’re tired. I’ll wake you once we get into the city.”

“What about your slayer-history?”

“Another time,” Danny mumbled, flicking her turn signal.

Thankfully, Carmilla relented, and curled in on her body like an overly smug, satisfied housecat. She was asleep within seconds, leaving Danny to wonder, and shudder, and extrapolate, at the myriad theories concerning the potential witch she had lounging in the passenger seat of her construction van. Danny chucked the two pain pills in her mouth and took a swig of water, hoping the drugs would dull the ache in her head as well as her shoulder.

 

* * *

 

 

“Hey, we’re here,” Danny nudged Carmilla awake, tapping repeatedly at the deep-sleeper’s shoulder.

“Hurmph,” Carmilla answered, flapping her arm out dazedly to get a hold of the door handle. She practically fell out of the bucket seat in a lump on the street.

Danny scoffed and exited the car, running around back to retrieve her tool belt and box. In a miraculous turn that she didn’t wholly attribute to Ibuprofen, her shoulder felt fine. Something was going on, something bigger than a beauty on the run and a creepy hell beast surfacing around Yuletide; call it solstice enchantment or fate or a curse, but Danny was determined to get to the bottom of it.

She led a silent Carmilla up the steps to the property her crew had nearly completed.

“Hey, Jack,” Danny nodded toward her foreman, bobbing her head around the bustling construction site. “Skylights?”

“Behind the counter!” Jack yelled over a screeching power saw, removing his industrial noise-cancelling headphones.

Danny watched the crew shuffle about, then seem to pause and turn, like a bewitched zombie hoard, when Carmilla crossed the steps to the entrance.

“Uh, Danny?” Jack asked.

“She’s with me,” Danny answered, waving Carmilla over with her head.

Carmilla followed, unbothered by the stares and gapes of the construction crew.

“Back to work guys, come on,” Danny chastened them, leading Carmilla through the partially-completed kitchen and back to the finished portion of the apartment. “We’re getting those lights up before Christmas even if you’ve gotta pull overtime tonight!”

“Hmm, very take-charge there, Xena,” Carmilla mumbled, allowing herself to be hustled into the far corridor. 

Danny slid a track-and-wheel, barn-style door open to reveal a fully furnished bedroom awash in bronze light, a tiny Christmas tree set atop a desk and quilts of homey design thrown higgledy-piggledy at the foot of a brass-framed bed.

“Nice digs,” Carmilla said, strutting into the boudoir like she owned the place.

“Not mine, but it’s pretty swanky.”

“How’s your arm?” Carmilla chanced, her attention fixed on the yellow of the window panes.

“Completely fine, which I think you already knew.”

Carmilla shrugged, then flopped back on the bed without invitation, kicking her boots off and dragging a quilt over her body. “Now how would I know that?”

Danny rubbed her temples with her fingers, already regretting the offer she was about to extend: “Listen, I don’t know exactly what’s going on with you. You’re pushy, and arrogant, and condescending, but I also think you’re into something. Trouble, probably.”

“Do tell-mmme-mmmore, Gingersnap,” Carmilla slurred into the pillow.

“And, since you’ve already seemed to make yourself at home, I was going to suggest you stay here for a few days.”

Carmilla opened her dozing eyes and sat up, training a calculating stare on Danny’s weary body.

“Really?” Carmilla asked.

“Yeah. I’ve got the keys until after New Year’s. The property owner’s a previous professor, a friend. He AirBNB’s this place more than he uses it. He wouldn’t care, and I think you might need it to… to work out whatever it is you’re going through.”

“It’s not really something I can get _out_ of,” Carmilla confessed, toying with the loose threads at the edges of the quilt. She seemed a little fragile, covered in triangles and rhombuses and other fractured shapes; the pastels heightened her pallor and diminished her, somehow, a woman whose abrasiveness had actually caused Danny to recoil when they’d first met.

“It’s a pretty color in this room,” Carmilla noted, a non-sequitur blatant enough that hinted for Danny not to push.

“I like the tinted glass in the windows,” Danny said, walking over to catch the strains of early twilight from the bedroom loft. “It’s more than yellow, or even gold. I’m not good with color schemes unless they’re on paint swatches, but… I guess I’d call it bronzey? Ochre, maybe?”

“Sepia,” Carmilla offered, falling down against the pillows. “I like that okay.”

“You can sleep now, if you want,” Danny said, even though it was hardly four p.m. “I don’t know how restful it will be, given the power tools two rooms down.”

“I sleep like the dead, Xena. Don’t worry about me.”

“Alright, I—alright,” Danny said, moving to slide the barn door back into place. Before she shut it completely, she paused, fingering the amulet that had somehow found its way back around her neck. “Carmilla?”

“Humph?”

“This necklace… how am I still wearing it?"

"You sure you ever took it off?"

"You took it off of me."

"Huh," Carmilla replied, flinging her forearm over her eyes. "Then no clue."

" _Should_ I take it off?” Danny chanced, which, was probably the better way to word the question to get the answer she wanted.

...

...

...

“Only if you want your shoulder to keep aching, Cinna-Stick.”

“Okay…” Danny said, shutting the door and turning back down the hall.

She whipped out her phone and shot Laura a quick text, then tried to refocus her scattered attention on the job at hand: skylights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys, T-minus ONE WEEK until Christmas!!!! I can feel the merry burbling in my veins (or that could just be the copious gallons of hot chocolate I've guzzled over the past week)! 
> 
> Here, have this little tune called Winter Eclipse. Because I just listen to folksy playlists on Spotify and write all the time, essentially :D 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U9DQru75Cg
> 
> Thanks for keeping up during your holidays, readers!
> 
> P.S. Credit where it's due: the tsoglav is taken and adapted a bit from Novic's fantasy novel Uprooted, a great read!


	12. Chapter 12

“Quiet, she’s sleeping!”

“But I want to meet her!”

“You can, uh, if she stays. I don’t know. She… she might get bored of all this and go back wherever she came from. I’m surprised she hasn’t left yet. Her face might be pretty, but her expression seems to have two modes: perpetually bored and snidely attractive. Neither of which make her seem like she's having that great a time with me.”

“I can’t believe you picked up a stranger off the streets! Whatever happened to ‘be careful, Laura.’ ‘People might try to take advantage of you, Laura?’ Danny, this is not the way to go about finding a new girlfriend!”

“She’s not my—hey!—better than the time you put my profile up on Tinder without my knowledge!”

“I was _helping_.”

“You were _meddling_. Sorta like you are now. Just let her sleep if she’s tired. For all I know, she’s on Chicago time. Or Kuala Lumpur time. Or Antarctic time!”

_Or undead European hinterland time,_ Carmilla thought grimly.

“I already sent Laf out for pizza. Your street-walking girlfriend is going to wake up eventually, and when she does, I’m going to be here, eating pepperoni, making fun of you and the lengths you’ll go to to pick up women.”

“You make her sound like a prostitute!”

“How do you know she’s not?”

Carmilla could practically hear Danny’s eye roll from around the corner.

“Laura, you’re impossible.”

Carmilla supposed she’d been eavesdropping long enough. But listening to Danny argue on her behalf was satisfying in the way that having a large Retriever freak at your return home was satisfying. Endearing. Heart-warming. But perhaps a little irritating, considering Carmilla had been saved by a _human_ —of all the fallible, mercurial beings—earlier that day, but still… Danny was appealing, Carmilla conceded.

“Impossible seems to be the theme of the day,” Carmilla trilled, slinking from around the corner of the hall and into the kitchen.

There were still saw-horses set up in the space, piles of dust from layered sheet rock and discarded cardboard boxes stacked in the far corner. No furniture in the open living area but the kitchen sported some barstools; plus, there was a large box that housed some massive entertainment system that must have been delivered during her brief nap time. Or possibly during the quarter-hour she poofed out of the apartment and sashayed down the street. It didn’t take long for a pedestrian to stroll by, and for Carmilla to catch them unawares from the shadows of an alley; she incapacitated the jogger with practiced finesse, and didn’t even take a whole pint of blood. She needed the man to be able to make it back home without much fuss; after all, she was still nervous about leaving a trail for her mother.

Any trail would be hard to come by, though, sequestered away three stories up in a private loft accompanied by Danny and her… pet?

Carmilla could only make assumptions as to the stranger’s identity; because looking at the height difference between Danny and the girl in the open kitchen, Carmilla wouldn’t be surprised to discover that Danny had used some of her supernatural connections to inject a corgi with a humanizing agent. Danny would then have her own hyperactive, mawkish, and incessantly responsive man’s-best-friend. All with a significant lack of shedding.

Carmilla was no Amazon, but this woman was simply _tiny_.

“Hi!” tiny said, and smiled brighter than a freaking distress flare. She marched right over to Carmilla and placed her hands on her hips, nodding with some ambiguous approval at Carmilla’s slumped posture. “I’m Laura, and you should get undressed.”

“Uhhh—”

“Laura brought you some extra _clothes_ , Carmilla,” Danny explained, palming the top of the shorter woman’s head with all the gentleness of a bear cub mauling a volleyball. Danny sat on one of the bar stools and twisted around on the rotating seat. “She works at a consignment shop, so I made a call. Figured you wouldn’t want to spend another night in your same jeans.”

“Thanks, Red,” Carmilla said, snatching the items Laura was currently chucking at her from over the kitchen counter.

“You’d think a journalist would be a little more aware of _context_ ,” Danny hissed at Laura.

“Wait, journalist?” Carmilla hesitated, taking an instinctive step back.

“Well, journalism major, if we’re splitting hairs,” Laura explained, withdrawing three beers from the upgraded stainless-steel appliance. She was so small that she disappeared behind the refrigerator door.

“So, you’re just in school?” Carmilla questioned, more at ease with a student.

“Yep. If I don’t fail out because of this project,” Laura continued. “You gonna try on any of that stuff? Danny didn’t exactly give me the best measurements.”

“I did what I could,” Danny said, popping the bottle cap with her pocket knife.

“Smaller than me and bigger than you is not specific, Danny; I’m already under pretty tight restrictions working at a consignment shop. Like, _does this shirt not have a blood stain on it_?” Laura rolled her eyes as Danny handed over the bottle opener. “The devil’s in the details, Lawrence,” Laura chided, mimicking Danny’s exact movement with the bottle opener. Carmilla wondered if Danny had spent late nights teaching the smaller woman how to open a beer bottle, or—late nights doing other things.

“Not that I don’t appreciate the duds here, Cupcake,” Carmilla began, wary of the ease between the two women, “but who are you?”

Danny slurped her beer and grinned, wiping inelegantly at the residue on her upper lip. Laura clicked the neck of her beer bottle against Danny’s, then proceeded to chug half of the drink. Chuck nor Asha had mentioned Danny’s involvement with anyone besides that Gretchen woman, so the little human corgi babbling at Danny’s side definitely blindsided Carmilla, throwing a wrench into the information she’d gathered concerning her—not that Danny was _her_ anything—but concerning the woman who’d stuck up for her. Carmilla didn’t know what to make of the snappy report between the two; it was too affectionate not to be somehow involved, yet combative enough to dismiss anything truly intimate.

Then again, Carmilla was always a sucker for the ones that argued. They certainly made things more interesting.

“That’s enough of that, Hollis,” Danny said, grabbing Laura’s wrist to bring the bottle back down against the table. “This little heathen intent on corroding her liver is Laura Hollis. She’s my little sister.”

“Sisters?” Carmilla asked. If the skepticism in her voice wasn’t apparent, she was sure it showed on her face. She’d never been all that good at hiding her emotions. Not that she ever needed to. Servants made their careers out of reading her moods; it was better for others that way.

“Foster-sister,” Laura amended, climbing up on the rotating stool next to Danny. “I’d love to see the genes of any people who, with combined DNA, would pop out both me and you.”

“Maybe the mom didn’t get enough vitamins when you were developing, pipsqueak,” Danny nudged Laura’s shoulder, and took another sip of her beer.

“Hey now, my fetus wasn’t exposed to Gamma radiation, which is the only explanation for all six-foot-awesome of you, Lawrence,” Laura countered.

“Well, at least you know you got your dad’s hair. And your mom’s eyes,” Danny said, softly, tearing at the label on her beer. She stood abruptly, and Carmilla noted the shift in the air; the lightheartedness suddenly weighted with a thickness akin to humidity. It felt all too familiar.

It felt like sadness.

“Danny, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“I’m going to go set up the television,” Danny said, polishing off her beer. “The cable guy came two days ago so we’re all set for the movie marathon. What do you say, Carmilla?”

“Pardon?” Carmilla asked, still trying to piece together informational bits to make sense of the scene.

“Pizza, beer, and cheesy cable Christmas movies,” Laura explained. “Though maybe not as cheesy as the pizza. I always ask for extra parmesan.”

“The woman does not consume real food,” Danny joked, yanking her thumb over her shoulder. “But if I don’t get to it, we’ll just be staring at each other, munching in awkward silence. I’ll come get you guys once Laf gets back with the pizza, okay?”

“Good plan,” Laura said, hopping off the stool and pivoting toward Carmilla. She gathered up a garbage sack in one hand and slung a hanging bag over her opposite shoulder. “Come on stranger, let’s go see what works for you.”

“Uhm, okay,” Carmilla said, following Laura back down the hall, definitely _not_ looking back over her shoulder at Danny… twice. “Is Gingersnap alright back there?”

Laura hung the bag up over the back of the bedroom doorway and tore into the sack of clothing.

“Ginger—?”

“Danny?” Carmilla rectified. “Everything seemed so light and fluffy I thought I was going to puke there for a second. Then she got really invested in that monstrosity of an entertainment device.”

“Oh,” Laura shrugged, beginning to lay out items over the rumpled bedding Carmilla had used that afternoon. “Danny always gets a little touchy, talking about her roots.”

“Why’s that?”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“Hasn’t been enough time,” Carmilla said, holding up and then immediately discarding an atrocious sweater sporting a reindeer, festooned with tinsel and actual, blinking bulb ornaments on its yarned antlers. She was of the generation that would rather not wear their light sources.

“We only bumped into each other on the street yesterday, Creampuff.”

“Which I’ll come back to,” Laura said knowingly, quirking her mouth into a half grin at Carmilla’s derision.

“Why is it any of your business?”

“I’m a journalism major,” Laura returned, propping one peevish fist on her hip. “I get a free pass in the prying.”

“Oh, is that the reason?” Carmilla replied, sardonic.

“Yes. And I’m also Danny’s sister. I’ve got a duty to warn off any potential creepers looking to take advantage.”

“So… let me get this straight. _You_ are going to warn people off of _her_?” Carmilla pushed, imagining the little woman going off on some perfectly acceptable suitor while Danny face-palmed in the background. It was like a bottle-rocket trying to defend canon fire.

“She’s my sister,” Laura said, righteous and self-assured. “And if anyone deserves a little help, it’s Danny. She’s been through a lot.”

“Oh,” Carmilla said, noncommittal but oh, so curious.

“I guess you know she’s in the restoration business?”

“We did get that far,” Carmilla assured her, sampling the feel of several fabrics. Nothing like the silken multi-threads of Montsurai, but washed and worn to raggedy comfort.

Carmilla actually preferred them to the fanciful fabrics mother forced her into for national ballet attendance and state dinners.

“Danny’s always been obsessed with making buildings livable. Turning houses into homes,” Laura explained, holding up a faded old band tee, nodding once, and then throwing it at Carmilla’s face. “Probably because she never had one.”

“Homeless?” Carmilla asked, recalling those few years between the release from her internment and mother’s finding her again. The wandering, while freeing in certain regards, lacked the security of certainty. Even if she was forced to sit on a throne, at least she had somewhere to sit.

“An orphan, from very early on,” Laura whispered, eyeing a deep blue sweater and tossing it toward Carmilla from over the bed. “Bounced around in foster care for a while; she almost got adopted when she was seven.”

“What happened?”

Laura paused in her unpacking, plopping down on the bed like some exhausted puppy after a particularly rousing game of fetch. She folded a shirt or two that had been deemed too large, probably weighing just how much information she was comfortable sharing with Carmilla.

“Let’s just say it didn’t work out. She’d been fostered with a family for a while, but…” Laura sighed, tilting her head up toward Carmilla. “I think I’d feel more comfortable letting Danny tell you.”

“They sent her back, didn’t they?” Carmilla deduced, hating that Laura was such an easy read; the puppy-human scrunched her face up at the guess. It was confirmation that something had gone rotten, like a spoiled fruit left to ruin just because someone had been careless enough to let it sit for so long.

“Can… can humans _do_ that?” Carmilla inquired, only somewhat knowledgeable of this new-fangled adoption system.

There were wards, taken in by benevolent aristocrats with the means to care; but then, she knew that for every high birth and happily-dismissed orphan story were those urchins who turned to crime on the streets because of their impoverished state; those kids who were locked away in prisons because they hadn’t been quick enough; or those who didn’t make it through winter because food was scarce, shelter unreliable.

Perhaps Swift was being merciful in his _Modest Proposal_.

Carmilla shirked her favored black sweater and pulled a rust-colored Henley tee overhead, grimacing to herself. When critical satire starts to make sense, _that’s_ when the world’s plunged over the hillside of logic and into the ethical abyss.

“They can do whatever they want, if they complete all the paperwork,” Laura said sadly. “And if seven-year-old Danny would rather fill out a form for city-league softball than strut around in some fancy-butt tutu… well, some families place too much emphasis on expectation.”

“Preaching to the choir, Shortcake,” Carmilla said, flipping her hair back over her shoulder.

She selected a pair of black jeans and stripped, modesty forgone. Laura was too wrapped up in her hanging bag to really notice anything out of the ordinary. Then again, it might be another clue to this pseudo-sister family; maybe they were both used to women stripping regularly in their presence?

In which case… Merry Christmas to Carmilla.

“So how’d you end up with a big sister?” Carmilla questioned, buttoning her fly.

Laura unzipped the hanging bag and withdrew two pieces: one was a slinky, sleeveless black jumpsuit, backless, with a rhinestone collar; the other a plum colored cocktail dress, strapless, with a lace overlay at the bust and ruching at the abdomen. She lay the two side-by-side on the bed, quirking her head studiously.

“Danny’d been squatting at an abandoned house for close to a year when I met her,” Laura said, fingering the hem of the dress. “Believe it or not, she was in school, and smarter than anyone in her grade.”

“How’d she manage that?”

“Spent a lot of time at the public library. Learned how to forge a signature at eleven, and to break into places a lot earlier than that.”

“Explains her expertise with a lock pick.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Laura smirked. “She was fifteen—no, sixteen, I think. I had the biggest crush on her at the time; I ordered Chinese food at least twice a week because she was working as a delivery girl for this restaurant in Toronto.”

Carmilla sat down in a comfy corner armchair, settling in for what she hoped to be a very illuminating history of her Gingersnap.

That is… of Gingersnap.

Not _her_ anything.

“Anyway, it was almost November, and Danny had mentioned she might not be seeing me as much. I was devastated,” Laura explained.

“She was just joking, I mean, of course we’d see each other in school; but, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Canada, but biking through the snow while carting orders around a neighborhood is hardly safe. Just ask my dad. I thought she meant it was because of the weather. But what she really meant was that the place she was squatting didn’t have any heat. She was about to pack up all her belongings and move out of the neighborhood, look for a place that would keep her during the winter. A YMCA that didn’t ask a lot of questions. She hated shelters, and had done one too many stints in the local hostels with forged IDs. People knew her face, and the last thing she wanted to do was call the police.”

“That’s strange; her first suggestion every time I talk to her is to call the police,” Carmilla said.

“She doesn’t have anything against the cops; she just knew they’d have to send her to social services. Now, those people… not Danny’s faves.”

“Allow me to attempt a close to the story,” Carmilla pulled her legs up under her in Indian style and rested her elbows on her knees. “You swooped in with mommy and daddy to play foster family to your girl crush.”

“Just dad,” Laura said, frowning so slightly Carmilla almost missed it. “Dad’s the biggest softee you’ll ever meet. He does safety wilderness workshops with a local Boy Scout troop. Emergency drills for earthquakes with the school systems. When he found out about Danny… all he wanted to do was keep her safe.”

“And… you found out first?”

“Journalism major, remember?” Laura grinned, a cat-with-the-cream satisfaction overrunning her rounded features. “I might’ve followed her after school one day.”

“I believe that’s called stalking.”

“Stalking, or just caring very actively,” Laura amended.

“Journalists are becoming worse than lawyers.”

“All in the spin,” Laura agreed. “Long story short, I freaked when I found out the truth. I mean, I thought I was her friend, you know? At school, we talked about books, where she wanted to go to college, how her job could totally be a pain in the butt, about the teachers we liked, the ones we hated, everything!”

Laura paused, picked up the formal jumpsuit and walked toward Carmilla. “But I didn’t really know anything about her,” Laura passed the garment over to Carmilla, eyeing her critically. “I believe you’re familiar with such a situation?”

Carmilla examined the sparkly neckline, unwilling to divulge anymore than was necessary. Gingersnap was already into her crap up to the knees; if she revealed anything else—well, up to the knees on Danny was essentially up to the waist on Laura. Either way, the two young women would be trapped in some thick paranormal mire.

“Listen, Danny was able to hide her situation for so long because she’s good at taking care of herself. Like, really good," Laura elaborated. "She’s also incredibly exceptional at taking care of other people. And like she eventually let me and my dad do for her, I think… I think she’d like to do for you. I don’t know much, but I know people chasing you two down the street doesn’t bode well for anybody. So let her help, okay? Or let me help! I love to help!”

“I’ll tell you like I told her: it’s not so simple, Shortcake.”

Laura giggled. “You called Danny ‘Shortcake’?”

Carmilla arched a brow and stood, ready to end the conversation. “Don’t get smart with me, sweet cheeks.”

“Can’t help it,” Laura shrugged.

“What’s with the fancy get-ups?” Carmilla asked, hanging the jumper up on the back of the closet door. “We planning something black-tie that I need to know about?”

“Whaaaaaaat?” Laura blustered, playing the innocent. “Can’t a girl have options?”

“A reindeer sweater or a snowflake sweater is an option. A cocktail dress with a slit up to _there_ is an invitation.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Laura said, backing up toward the bedroom door.

Carmilla watched as the woman felt for the door handle behind her, stumbling over the lip of the doorway.

“I think I smell pizza!” Laura said.

“You and your sister are terrible liars,” Carmilla remarked, following the retreating girl from the bedroom.

“Laura!” Carmilla heard from down the hallway. “Carmilla! Laf’s brought the pizza and I’ve only got one more cable to go!”

“Dinner bell,” Laura commented, and turned to sprint back down the hall.

“Sure, sure,” Carmilla followed, so wrapped up in her human acquaintances she didn’t even deride herself for smiling, smiling, smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all... just, why did I say by Christmas??? My deadline is so tight, and we haven't even gotten through the entirety of the second act yet! I mean, that's all written, but you guys might be getting double updates if I want to stick to this schedule (let's be real, I don't know if I'll be able to). The lead-up to Christmas is a lot less hectic than the week of.
> 
> But for you guys who've stuck around, I'm gonna get it all churned out. Promise! Just might be overlap into New Year's!
> 
> Thanks for reading along, everyone! I really appreciate it :D


	13. Chapter 13

“Tell me again how we were wrangled into doing this?” Danny muttered, unbuckling the metal catch from the belt she’d used to lash the massive tree to the top of her van.

They had pulled up into the drive of a semidetached house that doubled as a consignment shop, the one where Laura worked. After more beer bottles and shots of peppermint schnapps than she could count, Carmilla lost the bout with Laura's puppy eyes. 

She got them a little extra work this morning.

“No comment,” Carmilla mumbled, a pair of plastic, black, overlarge sunglasses obscuring her face.

“Oh, that’s right!” Danny snipped, moving on to the second belt. She hoisted herself up on top of the tire and stuck her boot in the wheel well, employing a series of hand-combat sequences to bat away the prickly branches. “ _You_ got sloshed and agreed to decorate a Christmas tree for my little sister.”

“I don’t recall anything of the sort,” Carmilla murmured. “And can you stop yelling so loudly?”

“You don’t recall it, because you ate one minuscule pepperoni slice and killed a six pack of stout all by your lonesome, plus the rounds of 'adult' hot cocoa. Impressive, but regrettable. And now, me and you are stuck carting this thing into the shop while my sister gets off-time to finish her schoolwork.”

“Stop complaining, that’s my job,” Carmilla managed. “Is it always so _bright_ this early?”

At the onset of dawn, the pair had cruised northeast up the motorway for about twenty minutes, finding themselves in a tiny village that sported a pub, a post office, a church, and a consignment shop. Laura usually worked days in spurts throughout the week since the sleepy town was so close to Silas, but her finals schedule was conflicting with her shifts at the shop. The one item on the day's agenda was to procure and decorate a Christmas tree for the 82-year-old Austrian widow who ran the shop. She lived right beside the store, and Laura couldn’t bring herself to say no to her kindly, aging boss, so she’d promised the woman a Christmas tree. Carmilla discovered all of these particulars at some point during the previous evening’s festivities, but putting it all together into a chronological information sequence was proving Herculean, even with her rapid-recovery vampire constitution.

It wasn’t often mother let her drink in the palace, and nine times out of ten she simply couldn’t be bothered to procure alcohol for herself. She’d indulged to far greater lengths and potencies in ages past, but she simply wasn’t as used to it as she had once been.

To summarize: she was hung over as hell.

“Reflection from the snow. Keep your shades on, Holiday,” Danny said, the ground below her likely to render her snowblind in her pitiful state.

“And stand back!” Danny nudged the bulk of the tree off the top of her van; the shapely spruce tumbled to the snowy ground with a muted _swish_.

Carmilla’s eyes crossed a bit as she counted two trunks, two Dannys—now that could be fun—and several porch steps leading up to the house-turned-shop they would be invading shortly.

“Alright, you grab the tip,” Danny said, stooping to pick up the trunk.

“I can get it,” Carmilla grumped, bypassing Danny and reaching for the heavier end of the tree. “I got us into this mess in the first place,” she rasped. “Might as well get it over with.”

“That’s the Christmas spirit!” Danny replied sarcastically, then nudged Carmilla away with her hip. “Seriously, this thing is heavy, and your equilibrium probably still needs a bit more recovery time. Let me get this end.”

“Pssh, you think I can’t carry it?” Carmilla scoffed, affronted.

“I _know_ you can’t carry it. It’s nine feet tall!”

“Shove off,” Carmilla said, throwing her body into Danny with more force than she’d ever previously shown. Danny staggered back and hit the door to her van, her lower jaw gaping at Carmilla’s exhibited strength.

At this point, the vampire princess could hardly rub two brain cells together hard enough to care that she’d just body-slammed Danny into a car. She was hung over, tired, and really starting to wonder why she’d gotten this involved with a crew of idiotic humans in the first place.

Danny, with all of her magnanimous gestures, and Laura, with her sunshine cheerfulness, and Lafontaine, an interesting specimen with ironic and insightful commentary. Not to mention Danny’s friendly neighborhood mages, with their blood cups and stake threats.

Just because Carmilla boozed herself to joyous black-out did not mean she felt good about last night’s indulgence. She’d woken with a splitting headache, tucked snugly up beneath the covers of that quilted bed in the apartment after a night of drinking and saccharine Christmas films (which meant that someone had dragged/carried her into bed—two guesses as to who was strong enough to pick up her dead weight). Somewhere around the sentient snowman’s second musical number, Danny had suggested a drinking game, which gave Carmilla all the excuse she needed to abandon herself to the revelry: a night with no expectations, no obligations, no required distractions on her part so that mother could continue with murder and malice.

It was, simply, simple.

And, as Danny mentioned, entirely regrettable. Leave it to Carmilla to allow herself to hope—to fully realize what she’d been missing. What she _could_ have, if it weren’t for her supernatural condition, her noble standing, her bloodthirsty kinsmen. Too many obstacles, too many delusions, and one beautiful redhead that she just body-slammed into a van because she’ll never be able to function appropriately in their world.

She was contemplating staking herself with one of the spruce branches to end her misery when she felt a shock of solid cold explode against her face, knocking her glasses from her nose and dribbling into the collar of her shirt. Carmilla dropped the trunk of the tree and whirled about in a tilting crouch, prepared to rip throats and tangle intestines.

But it was only Danny, standing there smugly against her van, tossing a snowball up and down in one hand.

“ _Gingersnap_.”

“Huh?”

“You. Are. Dead.”

“You can’t even walk down a side street without falling into a dumpster,” Danny replied, a competitive little half-grin daring her to challenge. “You really think you can best me in a snowball fight? Hung over? This early in the morning? I killed a hell-beast yesterday,” Danny grinned maniacally, practically preening on the sidewalk.

Oh, Cinna-stick was going to be _murdered._

Slowly.

“I’ve killed with greater odds stacked against me,” Carmilla growled low, predatory and determined. She knelt and began shoveling snow in her gloved palms, intent on teaching this inferior human about surprise attacks.

“Oh, have you?” Danny mocked, and beaned Carmilla squarely in the face once again.

Carmilla sputtered against the exploding ice crystals, scrambling about to shape enough ammunition for Danny to be begging her for mercy. Danny ducked behind the van and the race was on, Carmilla loping after her while cradling a bunch of hastily-formed snowballs.

For all her bravado, Carmilla performed poorly. Danny was indisputably athletic, with a physical awareness she’d employed against the supernatural on numerous previous occasions. Even though Danny didn’t _know_ she was going toe-to-toe with a Nightwalker, she still competed admirably, pressing every advantage. They made so many loops around the van they wore a track from their footfalls; Danny, knowing Carmilla would expect a higher trajectory, underhanded the snowballs like some fast-pitch softball hurler. The compacted snow spheres started at hip-level and accelerated with gusto; Carmilla had to resort to her super-speed to duck and dodge the snowballs, aimed at her face with deadly accuracy.

The pangs from her hang over were waning fast thanks to her supernatural agility, but Carmilla was, nevertheless, at a disadvantage. She remained upright while Danny shoulder-rolled through the snow to avoid her own snowball shots, indifferent to dirtying her attire. Centuries of wearing prim clothing and being scolded for her inherent sloppy habits had limited Carmilla’s abandon in a snowball fight; she had no intention of mucking about in the slosh.

But it simply wasn’t _fair_.

Danny was shouting gleefully, throwing out patent remarks like “Gotcha!” “Right in the moneymaker!” and, Carmilla’s eye-roll inducing favorite, “Ten points to Gryffindor!” Carmilla had yet to land a solid shot on Danny’s body, which was, frankly, embarrassing on her account. But vampire or not, she was born and raised, and then reborn and reraised, a lady. She didn’t exactly have a lot of practice with gamboling about like a crazed timber wolf.

Carmilla dodged a series of well-aimed snow flurries by ducking behind a tree in the front yard. She weighed her options, wondering if her pride or her secret was more important. Not that she didn’t have many secrets to keep; not that Danny didn’t already have a suspicion of something supernatural going on with her; not that she was a sore loser. Right. None of those things factored into her decision to poof directly behind Danny and shove a snowball down the back of her collar.

“Oh my g—! Hey!” Danny shouted, whipping around with snow tucked in her hands.

Carmilla darted behind her, viciously delighted, appearing first at one edge of the lawn to release a snow ball, and then rocketing toward the opposite hedge line, popping in a corner and out of it so fast Danny hardly had time to turn before Carmilla got a solid body shot against the girl’s dampening pullover.

“Okay, Flash, what the heck do you think you’re—crap,” Danny muttered, gulping at the sight of Carmilla standing atop the van, hands filled with globules of snow.

“Oh, no—”

Danny backpedaled, but Carmilla was too quick. She leapt with all the agility her dormant panther form possessed and knocked Danny to the ground, shoveling loads of snow into her face and on top of her torso, her shoulders, her neck. Danny howled, but managed to kick out from under her, which, after seeing the Gingersnap flip a hell beast over her shoulder the previous afternoon, shouldn’t have been as surprising or impressive as Carmilla believed it to be in that moment. Danny bounced back to her feet and got in a decent parting shot of bursting snow, until Carmilla recovered and launched an all-out assault with her hoarded snowballs. She threw them with whip-like precision and laughed, throaty and deep and sincere.

She crowded Danny back against the van, the misfires exploding against the door with hollowed _thuds_ as Danny wrapped her arms around her body and ducked her head. The cornered redhead hiked her leg up and folded her body in half to shield herself from Carmilla’s barrage, chortling and snorting all the while.

“Give up yet, Xena?!” Carmilla managed through her launches, closing in on a shouting Danny.

Danny made a rude gesture, so Carmilla continued her terror of tossing until she was close enough to hold the woman with her hands, not her snowballs. She shoved Danny’s torso back against the door of the van and dug the woman’s arms from their convoluted fold over her chest, pinning her wrists against the sliding door. She used her own body to stop her squirming, aligning their hips to keep the struggling Amazon in place. Danny’s chest was heaving from the laughter, from the exertion; and Carmilla was huffing plenty hard enough to match her breaths. She felt smug, satisfied with a victory; she might even concede to standing at the precipice of _joy_.

Danny’s breath was furnace steam, puffing inches from her lips and billowing in mini-thunder clouds between them. Carmilla realized she’d worked up a faint sweat, and could only imagine what Xena felt like, rollicking about like some filly in a muddied pasture, sweating with her human effort—and her heart, Danny’s racing heart, thumping in her torso, and her galloping pulse, muscles straining just enough that Carmilla could see the throbbing, flushed skin of her gorgeous neck—

“Mercy,” Danny dropped her head, avoiding eye contact. She wriggled the fingers of her pinned wrists and Carmilla relented; only a little, so she wasn’t cutting off any circulation to the woman’s hands.

Which, according to Chuck, were _magical_.

God, she looked good enough to eat—

_Crap_.

“Sorry,” Carmilla apologized sincerely, another first for her on this runaway adventure.

Carmilla dropped Danny’s hands, backed away, and cleared her throat, all for want of an appropriate response to nearly attacking Danny’s lips with adrenaline-fueled gusto. She smirked through her embarrassment, and spent a fair amount of time kicking the branches of the tree, avoiding Danny’s face.

“Easy there, Audrey!” Danny yelled at her, doubled-over to catch her breath.

“Careful, or I might just start calling you Katharine.”

“I don’t talk like Katharine Hepburn, surely,” Danny puffed heavy breaths, streams of air funneled through her nostrils like some minorly peeved dragon. “Or were you referring to the fact that I’d win more Oscars than you?”

Carmilla chuckled, pleasantly surprised by Danny’s knowledge of cinema. She was frequently surprised by Danny.

“Audrey Hepburn was more than just a pretty face,” Carmilla commented.

“And Katharine Hepburn did what she did because she wanted to, not because she won awards for it.”

Danny’s face was flushed to strawberry watercolors, her smile overlarge and her jawline rock-solid.

And Carmilla just _wanted._

“Don’t think just ‘cause you trounced me in a snowball fight means you get out of decorating this thing,” Danny said, giving the trunk of the tree a good kick for emphasis.

And Carmilla could only roll with it, hoping her desire didn’t betray her:

“I think loser has to do the major decorating bits,” Carmilla answered. “Or are there other stakes for snowball skirmishes?”

“Why do I feel like you’ve never been in a snowball skirmish before?” Danny asked, her brows jumping up playfully.

“No idea,” Carmilla answered, pivoting on her heel and stalking up the steps to the domestic-looking consignment shop. “Grab the tree, Red. It’s freezing out here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Depending on how high I am on Star Wars (going to the matinee!!!), you guys might just get another chapter posted tonight. Thanks so much for reading about these losers wrestling with each other in the snow.


	14. Chapter 14

“You know, I really didn’t think you were going to sit on your butt the whole time while I did all the work,” Danny commented, hanging a hand-painted, warped wooden ornament of what Carmilla believed to be a Valkyrie on one of the far branches of the tree.

“I _am_ helping, Gingersnap,” Carmilla rebutted, slipping the needle through yet another kernel of popcorn. “And it’s not as if you wouldn’t re-hang everything to your preference once I put something up there.”

“You’re just lazy.”

“Control freak.”

Danny stuck out her tongue and turned back to the remaining bare branches on the tree, leaving Carmilla to her popcorn and fishing wire.

It didn’t really count that she’d eaten half the bowl before Danny’d threatened her with bodily harm. But she much preferred to watch Danny decorate the tree than doing it herself: Danny, who’d had to throw her olive drab coat over the radiator and change out of her saturated sweater (into a thin cotton tee that liked to ride up scant inches whenever she reached for the topmost branches); Danny, who nearly caused Carmilla to choke on a half-popped kernel when she bent over to pick up the bell for the top of the tree. Danny, who’d been trading barbs and answering random questions for the better part of an hour, who’d snuck into the back office of the shop to brew up some coffee, who’d added a little Bailey’s to the brew— _hair of the dog_ , for Carmilla’s sake, she’d insisted.

“Where’d you learn carpentry?” Carmilla asked, piercing another popcorn kernel and pulling it down the wire Danny’d supplied for the edible garland.

“I picked up bits and pieces in my youth, trying to get by. Laura told me she spoke to you,” Danny said, hanging an ornamental spear with a leather loop.

Just what the hell kind of ornaments were these?

“She did,” Carmilla commented, slipping another two kernels onto the needle and tugging them down the wire. “I hope that’s alright.”

“I’m an open book,” Danny shrugged, plopping down into a lumpy armchair near the radiator at the front window of the building.

The shop itself was chaos. The store was one half of a semidetached house that sported disorderly and quaint compartmentalization, the few furniture pieces on display doubling as storage units for the bedding and draperies for sale. Tables and chairs were stacked atop each other for space conservation, so that you couldn’t tell where one set ended and another began (or whether they all belonged to one, large, mismatched set). There were racks upon racks of lightly used, and then heavily used clothing; garments from half a century prior were likely to crop up, having been tucked away and rooted through many times over.

Laura had done a meager job at decorating, running fake garland along book cases and setting up a chipped nativity with a headless Wiseman and a donkey that looked to have acid corrosion on one of its porcelain ears. The shop wasn’t set to open for another two or three hours, which left Danny to the tree, and Carmilla to her appraisal of Danny.

“I’d probably pick you up off the shelf,” Carmilla commented, returning to Danny’s metaphor. “I’d at least read the jacket.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Not this again,” Danny said, rubbing the back of her neck. “You saw me fight a dragon-tiger—”

“Tsoglav.”

“ _Tsoglav_ , whatever,” Danny amended. “I helped you run away from those security guys. I’m pretty sure you gave me a magic necklace to fix my shoulder, _and_ you promised me a professional photoshoot of my restoration work that I can use as promotional material to put up on my website.”

“I don’t remember that last thing,” Carmilla said, furrowing her brow.

“Well, it was worth a shot, right?” Danny grinned, and Carmilla felt the cavern in her torso swell. “Let’s play twenty questions.”

“I don’t think I’ll like that game,” Carmilla responded.

“Don’t answer if don’t want to, then,” Danny offered.

Carmilla chomped on another kernel of popcorn, but Danny didn’t rise to the bait.

_Okay, we’ll try this Gingersnap_.

“If we must…” Carmilla said, returning her focus to her popcorn stringing.

“Okay, question one,” Danny began. “Favorite photographer?”

“That’s your first question?” Carmilla asked, halting her movements.

“I want to know more about you,” Danny mumbled, eyeing the tree during the admission. “I’ll take what I can get for now.”

“Margaret Bourke-White,” Carmilla answered. “She was a photojournalist. The fist cover of _Life_ magazine was one of her shots.”

“What’s your favorite thing to look at?” Danny asked.

“You mean, which photograph?”

“No, just… your favorite thing to _look_ at,” Danny clarified. “If you like photography, that probably means you’re a visual person. For me, I like to look at the fronts of houses, judge the curb appeal. Like to be able to imagine what’s inside. Call it the renovator in me, but I look at some ramshackle, condemned building and I just refuse to see it as anything less than what it could be.”

“Optimist,” Carmilla spat.

“Is that an observation, or an accusation?”

“The latter.”

“I confess,” Danny tilted her head. “But there’s a healthy dose of realism, of knowing what I can do with that optimism. You never answered my question.”

…

…

…

“Stars.”

“Stars?”

“I like to look at the stars,” Carmilla answered, casting her gaze to the top of the tree. The shop owner didn’t have a star to place at the tip, just a grimy bronze bell to ring in the new year, or a new layer of dust to cover her assortment of sellable bric-a-brac. “I tend to get gloomy when it’s overcast.”

“Or sunny, or clear, or daytime, or occasionally while you’re existing—”

“I like stars,” Carmilla repeated, splitting the kernel with her needle once again.

“Well,” Danny smiled, leaning forward on her knees, “I’d say it’s a pretty good thing I installed those skylights.”

Carmilla didn’t comment, but if her pallor could redden, she imagined the heat in her cheeks would be churning and glowing like magma.

“Any particular reason why you enjoy the stars?” Danny pushed. “I mean, I’ve gotten you’re not a morning person; so as a night owl, do you have a favorite constellation, or… something?”

“It’s not so much about the constellations, though they have their own redeeming virtues,” Carmilla said. “It’s… the immensity of it. When you can see the stars you don’t feel so… confined.”

“Trapped?”

Carmilla jabbed another kernel of popcorn, pricking at the shell like the piece was a voodoo doll that had personally offended her.

“Maybe trapped by… obligations and anchor amulets?” Danny led, reaching into her pocket and extracting the necklace. “Thanks, by the way. My shoulder feels better than it did before.”

“Of course,” Carmilla said, looping the chain back over her neck. The remnants of any hang over that weren’t quashed by her earlier adrenaline rush disappeared instantaneously. Leave it to mother to help her and hurt her all in one fell swoop.

“So I’m guessing you had to pay a pretty penny for something like that?” Danny pushed. “Or… something of greater value? Magic necklace with healing powers.”

“It doesn’t have _healing_ powers.”

“Oh, my bad. Maybe you ordered it out of your supernatural catalog where you look up all the nasty evil beasts?”

“Do people find your sardonic prying charming?” Carmilla snapped.

“Just one person has today,” Danny winked, scratching at her tangled hair absentmindedly. “So… I don’t want to ask you what it is. But if it doesn’t _heal_ , what does it do?”

“It…” Carmilla paused, down to the last kernel in her bowl.

Was she really about to do this? To open up a can of flesh-eating worms by explaining phenomena she didn’t completely understand to this bastion of honorable womanhood? Rope Danny into something she couldn’t fathom the enormity or danger of, just because Carmilla couldn’t keep a handle on her _crush_?

“Help me hang this?” Carmilla said instead.

Danny nodded, taking the higher tier branches and zigzagging the kerneled garland between drooping ornaments and shimmering tinsel. Carmilla looped the string around the branches haphazardly, not really caring that she was tangling it against hooks and candy canes, throwing off the ‘decorative symmetry’, as Danny had said earlier that morning.

And Danny accused her of being concerned with visuals.

“What do you think?” Danny asked, standing back to admire their handiwork.

“I think it’s the best looking tree I’ve ever helped decorate,” Carmilla commented.

“That’s saying something, considering we’re missing a good portion of the middle branches because you crushed it with your boots.”

Carmilla looked abashed, because in all honesty, she hadn’t decorated a Christmas tree since her change. Hadn’t the time, or the desire, or the care, when servants could do it all for her, make it look a million times better than she ever could. But the random bright spots, the twinkling lights against a layer of shadowed pine, seemed to consume her focus, draw her in, the tinsel and popcorn strings linking the ornaments into random shapes, almost like constellations.

Almost like a forest night, sparkling with snow and brimming with stars.

“I think it’s beautiful,” Carmilla whispered, fingering an ornament hung by purple ribbon, a dashing red rosebud painted on flat, rough-hewn wood.

“Oh, which reminds me,” Danny said, rising from the armchair and heading toward the front door. “I’ll be right back.”

“Sure,” Carmilla said, circling the tree and wondering, ruefully, if this was one of the last pieces of nature that she would get to see for a very long time. Day three of her AWOL and it still felt like an entertaining escapism, knowing that she would have to return to her life... and yet she held onto this vacation as tightly as she could.

But centuries of losing, of bearing witness to history’s horrors had solidified her defeatism. She couldn’t hide from Mother forever. The duchess’s wrath was insatiable.

“Hey,” Danny said, seeming suddenly smaller. The redhead shuffled inside, unsure of herself, self-conscious as the moment she let her head fall and whispered _mercy_ , when Carmilla had her pinned to the van an hour ago.

“Yes?”

“Uhm, Merry Christmas?” Danny said, and presented her with a green bag with white and sparkly tissue paper flapping out of the top of it like little pale flames.

“You got me a gift?”

“Well, yeah. It’s… it’s nothing big. I had some time yesterday afternoon after I finished the installations, while you were sleeping.”

“You didn’t need to do… I really don’t deserve presents,” Carmilla said, plucking at the tissue and sticking her hand into the bag, her fingers wrapping around a nylon strap.

“Naughty list?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Carmilla answered.

“Everyone needs a little something at Christmas,” Danny said, as Carmilla pulled the gift from the bag. “Especially people who feel like they don’t deserve it.”

The camera was old, an Olympus brand mass-manufactured on the cheap during the mid to late seventies, if Carmilla recalled her production history correctly. Black and grey, and fairly bulky, compared to some of the sleeker modern models. But it was durable, had seen some scratches and knocks if the wearing on the edges was any indication. No bells, no frills, an amateur’s film camera with a cheap price tag and fairly limited settings. She flung the strap around her neck and let the piece hang against the anchor amulet, covering it, allowing Carmilla to believe her interests could possibly overshadow her obligations.

It was perfect.

“It’s not much, but, what’s a photographer without a camera?” Danny asked warmly, looking down at the contraption in Carmilla’s hands. “There’s uh—film in it already. I don’t know what kind, but the guy at the store said you’ve got a full role to shoot.”

“It’s uhm… it’s great,” Carmilla said, running her fingers over the corners and the planes of the mechanism, studying the settings for shutter speed and aperture size. “Gingersnap, it’s—” _Perfect. Too good for me. So much more than I deserve._ “It’s the best Christmas present I’ve ever received.”

“Oh,” Danny breathed, probably unaccustomed to anything resembling sincerity tumbling off of Carmilla’s lips.

“Well, good then,” Danny smiled, prolonging a beat that wasn’t meant for the two of them, certainly not for Carmilla—not all these small gestures built up into something she’d never be worthy of. “I know it’s early, but… I didn’t know how long you’d be around. You could disappear tomorrow, for all I know.”

“I might,” Carmilla confessed.

“It’d be one lousy Christmas present for me,” Danny murmured, stepping closer to Carmilla.

“What?” Carmilla tried to shrug it off, to back away into the tree, gather up the discarded tissue paper, knock Danny unconscious with her new film camera. _Anything_. Just so she didn’t have to look Danny in the eye and tell her this tenuous flirtation couldn’t last to Christmas, to the New Year, to… longer.

“You’re going to miss my frustrating half-truths and wise-cracks and nicknames?” Carmilla joked, hoping to ease the burdensome tension.

“I might,” Danny echoed Carmilla.

Pine needles were stuck in Danny's cedar hair, and she smelled like peppermint, and challenge, and adventure, and bravery bordering on recklessness. Carmilla gulped and met her vulnerable, human eyes, blue so bright that the sapphires and the lapis and the aquamarines in Montsurai’s treasury paled in comparison. And Carmilla could have her, a willing Yuletide dalliance. Circumstance had been kind to her for nearly 72 hours, allowing her a reprieve—a blank slate under Danny’s attentive care. It was right there, six inches, three inches, centimeters from her lips, pausing, waiting, allowing her to make the final concession.

“C-Carmilla,” Danny breathed.

“Danny,” Carmilla returned, shifting, so that the breadth of her new camera lens smushed between their torsos, forcing them to step back.

The moment passed, as all moments do for Carmilla, and her self-preservation kicked in. But more than self, this time.

Carmilla couldn’t drag Danny into this. If mother figured out anything about her, she’d be leverage. Or worse, punishment.

She’d be tortured, or incapacitated, or killed, all because Carmilla fell victim to sappy sentiment.

“I think we should go now,” Carmilla said abruptly, turning to pull her jacket over her shoulder. “That old lady will be opening this place soon. It’ll take a while to get back to the city.”

“Oh,” Danny said, hurt, but trying not to show it.

Danny was doing a fairly poor job of it. She wore her feelings on her sleeve like a badge of mortal honor:

_Look how much I feel! Look how breakable I am! Look at everything you can’t have!_

“Where would you like to—”

“Let’s try the gallery one more time,” Carmilla answered, picking up their two coffee mugs and turning toward the back office. She never cleaned. Unless she was avoiding something she wanted to do even less.

Like hurt Danny.

“I’ll be able to get in this time, I’m sure,” Carmilla called over her shoulder, waiting for Danny to give her the space she needed.

“I’ll… go start the van, get it warm,” Danny said, ambling past the racks of clothes.

Carmilla dropped the mugs in the sinks so hard she probably chipped one of them; she didn’t rinse them, didn’t do anything, except stand in the office berating herself, hating herself for getting so involved. Why didn’t she just get wasted and bed Danny from the start? Why did she have to prolong it, to _care_?

Mother would forgive a meaningless one-night-stand. Maybe. Probably.

Not this. Not… not respect and attachment.

She looked down at the camera dangling from her neck, noting the irony of a new burden, a better burden, but a burden nonetheless. Everything weighed so heavily on her; she wondered how much time she had before she collapsed and, once again, would have clods of earth heaped atop her body for her folly. Danny wasn’t Elle, was practically her opposite in every way. But the way they made her feel—once bitten, twice shy.

In more ways than one.

Carmilla twisted some settings on the camera, eager to lose herself in any distraction. The knobs and wheels whirred beneath her fingertips, clicking and locking into place. Circling the tree, Carmilla found the perfect angle and shot, capturing a Yuletide memory, quashing a bitter feeling.

“Carmilla, are you coming?” Danny asked, silhouetted in the doorway like some arch-angel capable of slaying every evil that dared poach the world of goodness.

Like her.

Danny could, and should, kill things like _her_.

Carmilla snapped quickly while Danny looked back at the car, wanting to remember Gingersnap in all her valiant, human glory.

Hopefully, mother wouldn’t break her too badly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've been fairly light on the angst thus far, and I really don't know if I'd categorize this chapter as outright angst. In fact, I have heaps of problems with that term as a fic genre, but I digress.
> 
> The point being, certainly a bit heavier chapter here, watching Carmilla fall so hard she probably broke something. But we're trucking right along; I've now resigned myself to writing more on this after Christmas, because I know I'll not be able to finish it beforehand. So longer story for you guys! Cheers!


	15. Chapter 15

“Once more, with feeling,” Danny said, pulling into a ten-minute loading zone on the busy city main street beside the Kuntshaus.

Carmilla had been characteristically quiet during their drive back; Danny had turned her attention to the snow banks on the roads, the carols on the radio, and the Alps rushing by her windows, clawing at the atmosphere like pointed nails attempting to scratch and tug at the robin’s egg sky. The forecast called for snow that evening, but the day looked far too perfect, rather out of sorts with the melancholy mood in the car.

Her traveling companion was not just quiet, but morose, tapping occasionally at the gifted camera slung about her neck, but primarily staring off and heaving pointed sighs. Her brooding attitude, while not outright hostile, still made Danny wonder if she’d crossed a line.

Was the gift too much? The snowball fight? The… ugh, she hesitated to call it a _moment_ , but there really was no other term to sufficiently describe their encounter in the musty old shop, standing so close to each other in front of the Christmas tree. Carmilla was running, that much Danny knew; so maybe it was all a little too much too soon.

Danny couldn’t say now, after an hour’s pondering hindsight, whether she would’ve kissed her. But boy did she want to. And the last thing she wanted was for Carmilla to waltz off into that gallery and disappear, never to contact her again.

The woman’s pull was strangely magnetic, something Danny’d never experienced with anyone before, even when she’d been in love. She certainly didn’t love Carmilla—hell, she was pretty sure she didn’t even _like_ her in the traditional sense—but there was something entrancing about the woman, that despite her rudeness and her terse, taciturn demeanor, she still sucked Danny in like an industrial vacuum hose. With her knowledge of books from the Underworld, Danny almost suspected the woman used some sort of bewitching glamour to influence others. Danny's prolonged exposure to Carmilla would account for her muddled sort of daze whenever Carmilla smirked at her; her flip-floppy stomach whenever Danny got the upper hand, when Carmilla would furrow her brow in amused astonishment, almost like she never expected Danny to impress her.

Because, truthfully, Danny never felt all that impressive.

“It’s not a long tour, I don’t think,” Danny commented while Carmilla unbuckled her seatbelt. It had been like arguing with a four-year-old to get her to put it on in the first place.

“Self-guided. I’ll learn more on my own than from some part-time intern reciting topic sentences he pulled off of Wikipedia.”

“I hope it lives up to your expectations,” Danny offered.

“What about you?”

“Huh?”

“Would you like to—that is, what’s on your agenda for the rest of the day?”

The shift mid-sentence gave Danny a little hope, that after all her hosting over the past three days Carmilla almost extended an invitation to walk the gallery with her.

But the invite never came, and Laura’s dad’s voice rang too true in her head: almost only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes.

“I’m heading out of the city again. There’s a cottage I’m working on for a client, one of Chuck’s friends,” Danny explained, turning up the button that controlled her defrost settings. “He lives up in Halstatt. Northeast, about two and half hours on the roads, if they’re not blocked. I’m tempted to just take the train, even though the stopovers make it a little longer. It’s supposed to snow tonight.”

“Big project?”

“No, nothing I’d need my crew for,” Danny said. “It’s more a volunteer thing—”

“So you’re not getting paid?”

“Chuck’s a friend,” Danny explained. “And his friends are older. You can hardly expect a retiree to get underneath the counter and wrap the pipes, or climb a ladder to caulk some of the cracks around the windows. It’s been snowing for a month already, but when he wants to come out to his lakeside cottage, it better not be freezing.”

“So that’s a long job?” Carmilla asked.

“I’d planned to stay overnight. I’ve got a thing in the city tomorrow night, though.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Danny said, unsure where to go from here.

Carmilla seemed at an equal loss, prolonging the departure by nodding succinctly, then lumbering out of the car.

The handle felt like lead weight in Danny’s hands as she tugged against it and stepped out onto the street, shut the door, and followed Carmilla to the sidewalk. Dark hair whipped back and forth as Carmilla scanned the sidewalk, getting her footing on the ground. Danny watched her tuck her camera beneath her coat, ducking her head against the wind and skittering to grip the side mirror of the van. Patches of ice had frozen hard beneath their feet, dangerous, like to trip up anyone who dared walk carelessly in the wintertime. And with Carmilla quiet, on edge and skittish as a baby deer, Danny couldn’t risk losing her sense of grounding. She already felt like Carmilla had pulled the rug out from under her.

“So, uh, thanks for making my holiday less boring, I guess,” Danny said, extending an awkward hand.

The hand might’ve been a viper's head, for all of Carmilla’s wariness towards it. But as she closed in and her eyes narrowed to calculating slits, Danny wondered if the formality of a handshake was coming across as pure insult.

Because the next bit all happened _very_ quickly.

Instead of disregarding Danny’s hand altogether, Carmilla linked their fingers and pulled Danny bodily against her, her free hand flying to the back of Danny’s neck to bring her lips down into a kiss.

The first feeling Danny recognized was abject embarrassment. The angle was all wrong, and her lips were chapped from their morning in the snow. She was a _much_ better kisser than what her performance indicated. She felt something slip over the crown of her head, but was more preoccupied with improving her execution than bothering with a wayward snowflake. Breaking contact to breathe and realign, ready for a far more satisfying round two, Danny noted Carmilla’s wide eyes—the eyes of a frightened person—not of a recently kissed to leg-wobbling instability person.

“On your knees,” Carmilla growled, and her tone was serious enough that Danny dropped immediately, without making a crack as to someone buying dinner first.

She felt the vibrations of thunderous footfalls approach from behind and was prepared to stand and fight, but Carmilla held her down like she was a toddler, a palm forcing her head into the pavement… and then Carmilla _threw a six foot man_ into the side of Danny’s van with one hand.

“Up!”

Danny watched Carmilla sling an elbow at the man’s nose. The cartilage broke with a sickening _crunch_ that showered the snow underfoot with crimson spatters. Carmilla then wrapped her fingers around the man’s throat and squeezed, hefting him off the ground until his feet were twitching.

“Carm—”

“Danny, duck!” Carmilla yelled, and Danny didn’t have to be told twice.

She dipped low on the sidewalk and heard glass shatter, slivers getting caught in her hair, her hood, shredding bits of her army jacket collar. Danny glanced up quickly to see another man cornering Carmilla with a tire iron, but Carmilla was too busy keeping the other squirming attacker from escaping.

Thank God for long legs.

Danny swept her feet underneath the second approaching attacker, the slipperiness of the sidewalk ice aiding in disarming the man. He fell back comically on the ice, but his head hit the concrete so hard it rebounded off the sidewalk. A lot less comical.

“That was my window, you idiot!” Danny shouted, kicking the struggling man in the ribs for good measure.

Carmilla tossed the bleeding attacker into a garbage can fifteen feet down the street and then turned to Danny, murder in her eyes.

“Get in the car,” Carmilla ordered.

Again, no need to speak twice.

“Hold up,” Danny said, grabbing the tire iron.

“We’re not fighting them, let’s _go_ ,” Carmilla shouted, opening Danny’s shattered passenger side door and forcing her into it. Danny clambered across the console and cranked the car, tires squealing as they pulled into traffic.

“They’re getting up,” Carmilla murmured, eyes fixated on the rearview.

“We’ll be around the corner before they know it. No way they’re catching up.”

“That’s what you think,” Carmilla muttered, launching herself into the back of Danny’s van. She started juggling tools, pausing only to gape out the back window. “They’re faster than anything you’ve seen before.”

“Just what the hell is going—”

“We need to get out of traffic, find a side road. Too many witnesses.”

“Why are we—?”

“We’ve got to abandon the van! They’ll have your plates, Red.”

“Hold on just a second,” Danny said, slowing for a stop sign.

“No time to stop, DRIVE!” Carmilla roared, reaching around and clenching Danny’s thigh. Carmilla shoved down, hard, enough for Danny’s foot to flatten the gas pedal. Danny had to swerve to miss a handful of pedestrians, who scattered in the wake of their high-speed retreat.

“They’re behind us, you’re okay, just calm down so I don’t take out a cyclist or something,” Danny said, trying to retain a sense of calm. “You know, ‘cause my ride has just been _van_ dalized.”

“Are you shitting me right now?!” Carmilla screamed, tossing wrenches aside and tucking screwdrivers and box cutters into the waistband of her jeans. “This is not the time for puns!”

“Well, what time is it then?!” Danny flared, turning the vehicle sharply enough that Carmilla got slung about in the back like a ragdoll. Not that it would do much damage, Danny figured, but she smiled smugly when she heard Carmilla break into a string of sailor-worthy swears.

“You better start talking, and make this story _real_ good,” Danny shouted. “Good enough for me to leave the transport I depend on _for my living wages_ in an abandoned back alley!”

“They’ll be able to track us. They’ve got both our scents now,” Carmilla grumbled, which was the opposite of an explanation.

“What, they’ve got bloodhounds or something?”

“Worse,” Carmilla said. “They’re _Changelings_.”

Danny found a slim alley four blocks west of the main square, near enough several properties she had access to that they could seek shelter in. She whipped into the narrow space and shoved the gearshift into park.

“And now that they’ve got our scent, they’ll call for reinforcements,” Carmilla continued.

Danny glanced up in her rearview and saw Carmilla flinging a hammer about spasmodically, testing its apparent bludgeoning efficacy. Deeming it useless, Carmilla tossed the hammer over her shoulder and upended Danny’s meticulously organized collection of knuts and bolts, spilling them all over the back of her van.

“Just what on earth is a Changeling?” Danny grit, trying to keep a handle on her temper. It had only taken three hours to organize those by diameter.

“The creatures my mother sent to find me. Think of them as the security detail from actual hell, so, technically, not of this earth,” Carmilla explained.

“Your _mother_?”

“Yes,” Carmilla snapped, chucking Danny’s tool belt at her. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”

Danny struggled with the straps and sheathed her dirk.

“Pistol,” Danny hollered, “Top overhead compartment on the driver’s side. It’s in a case.”

Carmilla found the gun and pulled the locking bolt to dislodge the cylinder, rotated the barrel to check for ammo, then clicked it back into place once she saw it was empty. She tossed the piece toward Danny in the front seat, who’d been digging through her glove compartment for some loose shells.

“Why are they chasing you?” Danny asked, popping bullet after bullet into the chambers.

She flicked the safety on and holstered her piece, thankful she’d worn her thigh-length military jacket so that she wouldn’t scare any civilians. Not that she wasn’t a civilian herself, but preparing to fight or flee from something with a name like _Changeling_ didn’t exactly make her normal.

“They’re here to take me back home,” Carmilla explained, yanking the door to Danny’s van open like it was the plastic door on Barbie’s dream corvette. Danny was tempted to send her a bill once all this was over, considering she just dented a fourth of her van.

“I ran away,” she said, hopping out and jamming the door back closed.

“You said you weren’t from here. How can they take you home?” Danny asked, as they set off down the back alley.

“I’m visiting. I travel with a security detail. Come on, this way,” Carmilla said, stamping through puddles and then turning back, doubling over a trail they’d already walked and then zigzagging back and forth across traffic.

“Where do you think you’re taking us?” Danny asked.

“I don’t know, just trying to lead a false trail, get as far from—”

Danny heard the screech of brakes and the clattering of metal against metal, then saw a huge black SUV come careening around the corner, pushing a sedan into a light pole. Glass shattered and sparks flew. One holiday craft stand was overturned as pedestrians dispersed, red and white flower petals and piney wreaths spilling over the curb and into the street.

Carmilla swore, urging Danny faster.

“No, this way,” Danny said, tugging at Carmilla’s sleeve so that she could redirect her and escape with something like a plan. Carmilla had no idea where she was; she got turned around in this city when she _wasn’t_ being pursued. Add a stressor like a creepy, government-issued tail to her tracks, and she was bound to just scale a building and hop from roof to roof.

Again, not something Danny would put past her.

“Our scents,” Danny asked, jogging with Carmilla down a street in the market district, bypassing storefronts and window displays. “Why do they have them?”

“They always have mine,” Carmilla said, hurdling a planter. “They’re around me all the time, I’m not hard to track. God, can’t you run any _faster_?”

“I run a five minute mile!” Danny griped, cutting around a corner so quickly she nearly collided with a cozy looking couple, out for a morning stroll in the snow. Their terrified screams seemed appropriate considering she had a tire iron in one hand and a utility belt draped around her waist. Danny ignored them, and led Carmilla down another abandoned side street. They were almost there.

“Why can they smell me, though?” Danny huffed, the freezing air prickling at her lungs like pine needles. She splashed through a massive puddle and felt the wet seep above her bootline and into her jeans, sending shivers up her thighs.

“Because I increased your pheromone output,” Carmilla said, casting wary glances over her shoulder.

“You did what, now?”

“I macked on you in the middle of the street to cover my scent,” Carmilla replied snidely, brightening when she saw the sign for the train station… where Danny had been planning to take them all along.

“Fat lot of good that did me, but this will do nicely, too,” Carmilla smirked her satisfaction. “Come on, Red.”

“MIRCALLA VON KARNSTEIN!”

Danny didn’t have time to feel wounded that she’d been used, for in the alley behind them were three overlarge men that looked like they had Egyptian scarab beetles crawling underneath their skin. Their faces seemed to be boiling, curdling like butter, growing hairs or lengthening spines, or disjointing and reclicking bones into sockets, until their shifts were complete: the security guards were no longer human.

The black suits they wore faded to slimy fur, wiry grey and black hairs covering their Sasquatch-like bodies in mats and tufts. Their arms reached down to their knees, and their ears, Danny marveled, had hardened to points of horned bone, stretching like elephant tusks in two wicked spikes above their square-shaped heads.

“Any suggestions?” Danny asked Carmilla, who had already taken up an attack position at her side.

“Yes,” Carmilla said, eyes roving the Changeling pursuers as they converged to formation. She turned abruptly toward Danny, and started feeling her up.

“Hey!”

“Keep this on, at all costs, Gingersnap,” Carmilla said, pulling out the anchor amulet from beneath Danny’s shirt. Danny had no idea how she was wearing it again, but she suspected some of Carmilla’s super-speed had been employed to get it around her neck.

“They’ve got weak knees, but a long reach,” Carmilla continued, tucking the anchor back beneath Danny’s clothing. She unzipped Danny’s jacket, and seemed to take stock of anything Danny had on her person that could be used as a weapon. “If you can take them down and get the back part of their skull, it knocks them out cold.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” Danny muttered, flipping the side of her jacket back so that her pistol was in reach. Even in the cold, drafty alley, she felt sweat start to form on the inside of her palms. She just prayed she could keep a hold of the tire iron.

“One more piece of advice, Gingersnap,” Carmilla replied, resigned and ready to battle. “Don’t freak out when I turn into a panther.”

“Sure, sure,” Danny said, stalking towards her doom as a black shadow—one Danny could only assume was Carmilla—leapt before her and started mauling the Changelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!
> 
> AAAAAAACTION!!!!!
> 
> And the first (only?) smooches, but not for real, 'cause I'm a devilish little Christmas elf that gives you what you want, but not under the circumstances you want it. Basically, Jordan Hall's MO.
> 
> Happy Christmas Eve Eve!


	16. Chapter 16

So, it turns out the battle in the basement with the tsoglav was merely the warm-up. Three Changeling-shapeshifter-special-ops-security-demons versus one human and a jungle cat was the main event.

As much as she needed to process that the girl she’d been crushing on for the past few days could change into a panther _at will_ , Danny instead zeroed in on the smallest of the Changelings, hoping that attacking first would catch the beasts off guard.

She charged it, putting a bullet into its shoulder on her advance, which seemed to shock the monster into a stagger. Banking on her trusty ground maneuver to work two days in a row, Danny used the iced patches in the alley to slide directly between the feet of the Changeling and strike against its shin with the tire iron; the beast crumpled forward with a yowling roar, but its recovery time was much quicker than that of the tsoglav. Before Danny had a chance to regain her footing, the beast wrenched her up by the ankle and held her inverted, several inches off the ground—which was really saying something about the thing’s height, given Danny’s own stature.

Tools that might well have been useful for something like, oh, _survival_ , clattered to the ground as the Changeling shook Danny so hard that her brain bobbled against her skull like a tennis ball in a Williams sisters match. She swatted ineffectually with the tire iron at the beast’s abdomen, spasming and kicking with all of her might, just to free herself of the thing’s grip.

Realizing brute force wasn’t going to work for her, Danny swapped tactics: leverage. She knew leverage; it was how buildings worked, the basics of architecture.

Danny gave the creature an upside-down hug, which, if that had been done earlier on in the Changeling’s life, then they might not even be in this situation. She wrapped her arms around its putrid body, almost gagging at the stench when her nose got buried in the oily fur. She kicked her heel against the creature’s chin with enough force that the thing loosed its grip on her foot. She twisted her body so that her eyes were now staring at the Changeling’s kneecaps, and then she wrapped her legs around its neck. Danny started squeezing with her thighs, wondering if hell beasts possessed similar respiratory systems to humans.

She wanted to crush its trachea.

Whether or not they did, her tactic was working, because the beast was flagging above her, enabling Danny to bend at the abdomen and reach completely behind its body, trapping its legs in a circle made from her hands and that lengthy tire iron. She brought the metal sharply forward, pulling it towards the sensitive part at the back of the Changeling’s knees. Laura used to love to dead-leg her, until Danny caught on quick enough and started falling _on top of Laura_. Though the beast wasn’t half as cheerful or decent-smelling as her sister, the same rules applied.

The Changeling’s knees buckled and it fell to the pavement. Danny, expecting the immediate descent, placed her hands down to catch herself and cartwheeled out of its grip, rising in a batter’s stance to deliver the final blow to the back of the Changeling’s skull. She swung as hard as she could, the resulting splatter of mossy-green goo dripping from the back of the demon’s head testament to her desperate strength.

One down, two to go.

Danny pivoted, only to be tackled instantly by a titanic black mass. There were claws biting into her shoulders, but the jungle cat above her didn’t chomp her face in two. Instead, Danny watched as the panther stiffened suddenly, its eyelids fluttering, then slumped on top of her in a heavy feline heap. By the time the body reached the ground at her side the fur and fangs had completely receded; Carmilla was back, with a gaping wound in her torso that oozed some very important-looking liquids.

“No—” Danny mumbled, scrambling to her feet, only to come face to face with the remaining Changeling.

The thing sported a huge wooden javelin in one hand, and a hooked appendage replacing its fingers on the other. It looked like the curved weapon grew organically from its wrist, straightening into a poniard and then curving back, like a sickle, perfect for jabbing or scalping or slicing, or any number of unfortunate maneuvers one could perform with a pointy-thing.

It didn’t really matter what the Changeling was working with, because Danny was about to bash its head in.

That thing had stabbed Carmilla.

Had _hurt_ her.

And Danny Lawrence would not take any of that shit.

Danny popped two bullets into the body of the beast, one in its gut, another in the joint of its shoulder, rendering its stake-wielding arm utterly useless. She flung herself at it, grappling and kicking with unstoppable force, heedless of the scratches it raked against her back with its hook. She felt wired, like she’d just shot five double espressos, and aware, almost as if she could feel her synapses firing in their channels, the impulses traveling along her axons to pilot her limbs and direct her appendages to bash and batter and bruise.

She landed a good shot to the face, knocking the beast back against the brick wall so hard that one of its horns cracked, and dislodged from its own head. The Changeling was snarling, but it wasn’t nearly as ferocious as Danny; she drew her dagger and started stabbing at the beast’s joints, aware of her mistake attacking the gut on her last encounter. She slipped in something, ice or blood or Changeling guts, but that allowed her to jab her dagger into the kneecap of the Changeling and shoulder it to the ground.

Danny climbed atop the thing and started punching, missing the face on one punch because two heads were staring back at her…

Two Changeling heads, one with dead, hollow, haunted, crackling eyes.

But it wasn’t attached to a body.

Carmilla had _ripped_ one of their heads off.

And the other one had repaid her with a stake to the gut, after she'd tackled, covered... protected Danny.

Danny shouted something brutally inarticulate, raising the Changeling up by its shoulders and head-butting it into submission. Its eyes jiggled in their sockets like a holiday jell-o mold, that jaundiced, pasty yellow color fading of light, the lids closing, the body, stilled.

Danny kicked the thing in the skull for good measure before sprinting over to Carmilla, who had curled up on her side in a pathetically painful fetal position.

“Carmilla!” Danny gasped, falling to her knees beside her. She had no idea if there were more of those monsters out there; and she could only guess that a bloodbath in a side street might be the equivalent of a perfume store for anything that possessed their monstrous olfactory powers.

They had to move, and they had to move _now_.

“Carmilla, okay, we need to get to the station—”

“Ugh, no shit—”

“Can you stand?”

Carmilla grunted as Danny pulled her to a sitting position. She shucked her tattered jacket and wrapped Carmilla in it, hoping no one would notice the stream of blood dripping from the smaller girl’s side.

“Come on, come on,” Danny said, leading a limping Carmilla through the crosswalk and toward the entrance to the train station.

It took too long, way too long, because Carmilla would lose consciousness every few steps. Onlookers started gawking, pointing at the battered woman and the raggedy friend supporting her. Danny pulled the hood up over Carmilla’s head and kept her own eyes fixed on the pavement, hoping no one would interfere.

The train station had sparse foot traffic mid-morning, the work commuters having already caught their transport; the remaining passengers were probably those getting a jumpstart on the holidays. Danny just thanked her stars it wasn’t Christmas Eve yet. The train cars were always packed to bursting with riders ready to rejoin their families.

She heard an inhuman shriek echo from across the street, in time with an electronic beep, signaling a railway departure. Danny practically dragged Carmilla through the entrance of the station.

Danny didn’t wait in line, didn’t stop at a ticketing kiosk. She just picked Carmilla up and jogged for the turnstiles, wincing at a sharp pain in her leg. Ignoring the burn, she hopped over the barrier and shoved the portly security guard who’d moved to stop her. The poor man landed in a sputtering jumble on his butt.

“Sorry!” Danny yelled, waiting for the end of the train to fly past her, so she could leap onto the open-air platform.

Danny chanced a glance behind her and paled in an instant: an explosion of plaster and shrapnel showered the station entrance, metal pinching and brick crumbling under the Changeling’s supernatural claws. It was the one she’d left in her haste, the Changeling she’d whacked into a stupor with her own forehead. It detached and then threw an electronic ticketing dispenser against the brick wall of the station, wires ripping from sockets and sparks shimmering like stardust. The few travelers in the station fled and screamed as a wailing siren echoed against the walls of the long tunnel.

Someone must have tripped the emergency alarm.

“Dammit!” Danny blustered, watching as the train rolled slowly past, the terminal end of the moving metal snake creeping slowly nearer to them, the Changeling closing the gap all the while.

Danny set Carmilla on her feet and slapped her face, then peered over Carmilla’s shoulder at the approaching monster.

“Wha—?”

“You’re gonna have to jump,” Danny said, tearing at the buttons of her shirt so she could get to that amulet. She found it, and yanked it back over her head, then slipped the chain over Carmilla’s neck.

Danny nearly crumpled at the loss of the necklace.

What a sap she’d been, feeling, fleetingly, like a super hero. It was nothing more than enchantment, nothing more than magical safeguard. Relocating a random couple of water spirits was one thing; the Silas monsters seemed _tame_ compared to these, and she didn’t really even fight the tsoglav on her own… but this, taking care of people, this she could do. Danny locked her knees and dug deep, hoping her adrenaline could fuel what she figured would be a rather sloppy martyrdom. The beast was only thirty yards away, and gaining ground.

“Jump?” Carmilla asked, dazed and bleeding.

“On the train,” Danny indicated, pushing Carmilla toward the platform. “I’m right behind you,” she lied, squeezing Carmilla’s blood-wet fingers as the end car passed by and they started to run alongside the speedy metal snake.

“Now!” Danny shouted, heaving against the smaller woman’s broken body as Carmilla launched herself toward the train. She tumbled onto the small open space near the back door of the train, wounded, but alive.

“Danny!” Carmilla shouted.

Danny popped her dagger up and twirled it in her fingers, saluting with a little tick at her brow.

“You better get to that gallery, Holiday!” Danny shouted, before turning and stabbing at the remaining monster.

She only glanced its beastly arm, of course, without the amulet to aid her. The Changeling took a monstrous swipe at her and knocked her from the platform, lip splitting and teeth rattling as she ate a face full of train track and gravel.

The rumble of the train down the line soothed her bonging skull, her exhaustion compounding as soon as her body relaxed on the tracks. All she wanted to do was sleep. Carmilla was going to be okay, and the authorities would be here any minute to take care of this thing. Surely a squadron of heavily armed mortals could take out one security guard hopped up on roids from hell, right? How much more danger could the rest of Graz be in?

She felt the vibrating jar of the beast’s body weight as it jumped down from the platform and towered over her, holding up the horn Danny had cracked from its head back in the alley. Its prehensile hook morphed to a steely little blade, needle-thin and doubling, or tripling—Danny couldn’t really count the number of pointed tips through her blurry vision. Determined to fight until the end, she kicked, weakly, at the Changeling’s injured kneecap. It stomped against her ribs, then knocked the side of her head with a cloven hoof. The beast was huffing gutturally; it stepped on her shoulder and pressed until she felt something break, the pain of yesterday returning a thousand fold and white-hot. The Changeling roared at her, noxious breath filling her nostrils and making her gag. She was going to be sick.

_No, I will not die in a puddle of my own vomit_.

Danny crawled back as much as she could, slipping over the rails and scratching her hands in the chipped rocks. The beast raised the pointed tip of the horn, ready to strike.

“I don’t think so.”

Danny could hardly watch as Carmilla kneed the beast in the gut and grabbed its throat, wrenching and digging so tightly with her nails that she pulled something, a tube, or a tendon, out of the beast’s neck with a sickening _squelch_. The beast shuddered, convulsed, then fell to its knees in front of the woman Danny had tried to save from some lousy pickpockets three days earlier. Carmilla took the beast’s maw and dislocated the lower jaw, ripping the head back from the chin until she’d was covered in slick, bestial innards, clumpy bits of brain matter staining Danny’s favorite jacket.

She heard Carmilla call her _idiot_ , but was really more concerned with what her dry cleaning bill was going to look like at the end of this month. Carmilla looked damn good in her jacket, even if it was covered in blood.

Before she could tabulate an estimated charge, Danny blacked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas Eve!!!
> 
> Have some action-packed supernatural fighting to start your holiday off right. (I think that coulda been this chapter's title). Anywho, there won't be a chapter post tomorrow, but I'll hopefully have time to edit and get the next bit up on Saturday. Merriest of merries to all who celebrate, and warm thoughts and wishes to everybody home for winter break! 
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading along, commenting and kudoing. Every hit is like a Christmas present. Given the smallness (but awesomeness!) of the ship and my lack of a tumblr to self promote, I'm truly honored to have such a dedicated group of readers. You guys are the greatest.


	17. Chapter 17

Cold.

She was definitely cold. Drowning. She was soaked, caught beneath the ice, there was water up her nose, she couldn’t breathe—why didn’t Rose make room for Jack on that damned door?

_This is the worst death ever._

“Easy there, Cinna-Stick,” Carmilla chided, so close to her face.

Through the blur of nonsense sound, Danny saw her, two cuts heeling over her pale little nose, hair tangled to charcoal knots. Carmilla was so close to her face, scant inches away, so close Danny wondered how she’d gotten there. Danny shifted and pain blasted her body, beginning in her shoulder and spasming outward like multiple lightning strikes expanded from a ferocious, furious source. Something round and hard was jammed in the small of her back. It felt like… like bone.

Carmilla—Carmilla was _holding_ her, cradling her as torture wracked her nerve endings in some infernal tableau of death. She was sprawled across Carmilla’s lap, her head resting in the crook of the woman’s elbow and Carmilla’s bony kneecap jammed into her lower back. What a sorry picture for Carmilla to take comfort in, after Danny was dead and gone, released from her small eternity of agony.

“C-C-C-C-Carmilla?” Danny chattered, feeling the wind on her cheeks, stinging against the wet there.

“Yes,” Carmilla said noncommittally, but Danny could barely hear her.

The freezing air was solidifying the liquid at her ears, turning the cartilage to ice cubes, frosting the snot and slosh on her face. She tried to sit up, but the ache in her shoulder radiated down her arm and across her chest, causing her body to seize up.

“Listen to me,” Carmilla said, dully, still so close-close-close to Danny’s face. “Breathe through your nose, okay, Gingersnap?”

Danny inhaled, but the air she swallowed tasted rusty and glacial. Carmilla rubbed her cheek against Danny’s face, cradling Danny’s head in her arms. Warmth… fleeting, but present, so close-close-close.

“I said through your _nose_ , lackwit. You’ll gargle on your blood otherwise.”

Something jarred her and she yelped, groaning as the pain in her chest returned, amplified by the arctic temperatures and her frozen appendages. If they didn’t do something soon, she was going to contract hypothermia. A much slower death than a horn to the brain—

“W-w-where are w-we?” Danny managed, the memory of the scuffle at Graz's train station returning, details muddled, especially the outcome. Wind rushed through her ears and the earth rumbled below her, as if Nature were retaliating for some unrecognized wrong.

“We’re on the back of the train, heading north, if I’m not mistaken,” Carmilla answered, running her hand up and down Danny’s uninjured arm. Danny felt Carmilla breathe against her face, hot and humid as a swamp; she could almost feel her nose again. “I caused an immense ruckus when I stalled the thing the first time around. Didn’t want to get booted off by causing another scene… this time with an extra passenger.”

“How—?”

“They’ve got an emergency pull for a reason,” Carmilla answered. “Watching your friend get stabbed to death on the tracks constitutes an emergency, I believe.”

“I don’t—I can’t—”

“It’s okay, Xena. I just had to make sure you weren’t dying on me. Took some melted snow to the face to do it, but I finally got you conscious.”

Danny blinked, that infuriating smirk dominating her vision, because Carmilla was so close-close-close-not-close-enough.

And Carmilla must have somehow dragged her up on this back platform, gotten the train to stop, brought her back, but they weren’t inside a car, they hadn’t bought tickets, and the monsters, left for dead on the tracks, or in the alley, why were they even chasing Carmilla in the first place, and why—no, _how_ , did she turn into an effing panther, and rip the throat from the beast’s neck with nothing more than her black-lacquered finger nails—

Danny's head spun with the questions, with the mysteries, and her lungs were cold, and heavy, and heaving, and she might just be having a panic attack or be hyperventilating or—

“Hey, hey,” Carmilla chided, stroking the side of Danny’s face. “Close your eyes, breathe slowly. Rest… please. Maybe I’ll figure out a way to get us _inside_ the train while you doze, okay?”

Danny managed to rectify her breathing, matching time with the patterned thuds emanating from the underbelly of the train. She snuggled closer into Carmilla’s chest, burrowing into the soundlessness of her ribcage. She let her eyelids droop and her consciousness drift, intent on interrogating the ever-living hell out of the woman breathing warmth back into her body.

Just… not right now.

 

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Danny awoke to sterilized lighting and the roar of a NASCAR track, furnace-force air streams hitting her cranium and poofing her snow-wet hair.

Or maybe blood-wet hair.

Who knew?

Her scalp felt like it was crackling, as if someone could peel it like the shell of a boiled egg. Her fingers felt crusty; she didn’t even want to wager a guess as to what substance had dried there. And her shoulder, stiff as a rod and throbbing interminably, felt as if someone had ripped it from its socket and then improperly reinserted it. Everything ached. Even her eyes stung, in this sanitized, harsh hydrogen light, buzzing like bulbs in a prison wing. She blinked several times against the light, trying to establish her bearings.

_Owwwwww—_

“What are you looking at, Granny? Never seen somebody passed out on the bathroom of a train station before?!”

Carmilla was above her, ranting at some poor old woman high-tailing it out of the room—

Above her, Carmilla, that’s right, that’s—nope, few people have ever been above Danny. She watched as Carmilla broke a plunger in half like a toothpick; she jammed the dowel into the door handle, effectively blocking anyone else from entering the room. Carmilla turned back to her muttering over the sink. Danny blinked again, twisting around and ramming her face into a plastic wall, a garish pink material Danny finally recognized as the door of a lavatory stall.

She was on the floor of a public restroom, with her head stuck underneath the hand dryer.

And it wasn’t even Summer Society initiation.

But she could move, and her body didn’t feel like giving up, which was definitely a plus. She felt like she was floating, her limbs detached from their nerve receptors. She was super sore, like she hadn’t properly stretched after the most intense workout of her life. And she was damp, but getting dryer, and warmer, except for her butt, growing numb on the chilled laminate tile of the bathroom. She watched Carmilla scrub furiously in the sink at a t-shirt she swore she’d been wearing before—

Danny opened her jacket and saw, again, that she was shirtless. She really had to stop waking up to find that Carmilla had stripped her. Not surprising at all was the anchor amulet, wrapped around her neck and swinging steadily over her navel.

“Hey,” Danny mumbled, but Carmilla couldn’t hear her over the water. “Eh, hey!” Danny said again, swatting at Carmilla’s calf.

Carmilla flinched and peered down, dropping the shirt in the running sink. She gaped for a millisecond and then plummeted, grabbed Danny’s face between her two wet hands and stared. Her lips and nostrils twitched in a mixture of fury and relief. Her thumbs stroked Danny’s cheekbones reverently, as if she doubted Danny's wholeness (Danny was overwhelmed with the image of Carmilla ripping the upper skull from the lower jaw of a monster with twice her cranial diameter; thank God for her immobility or she might have recoiled from Carmilla's hold). Back on the bathroom floor Carmilla's jaw was working, her lips curled back in a snarl or a smile.

But she remained quiet—so quiet Danny despaired at the silence.

“You…” Danny began, but couldn’t finish.

Carmilla just kept _staring_ , at Danny’s wrinkles and her dimples and her eyelashes and her pores. Probably at her bruises and scratches, too. Danny wavered under the scrutiny, waiting for Carmilla to make a smart comment about her nostril hairs, about the flooding tear ducts in the corners of her eyes. She wanted to wrench away but couldn’t, wouldn’t, just trembled a little, remembering with staggering clarity that Carmilla had decapitated a monster less than an hour ago. There had been scratches above Carmilla’s nose… Danny was sure of it. Faded now, she guessed, because of the amulet or a greater secret.

She needed those secrets discovered. The questions answered, the mysteries solved. They had to put a stop to this… this weird dance they were performing, fumbling about, tripping each other up. Someone was going to cartwheel head over heels and sever a spinal chord or crack a vertebra. Someone had to give. Something had to break.

Danny just hoped it wouldn’t be Carmilla.

And with the ache in her shoulder and the gash in her leg, she desperately hoped Carmilla wouldn't break _her_ like she’d done to that plunger handle.

“You’re okay,” Danny said, because it seemed like the safe thing. Feeble, imperfect and untrue, but _right_. She needed to hear it for herself, equally as much as Carmilla did. “You’re—we’re gonna be okay,” Danny said again, tangling her fingers against Carmilla’s at her cheek.

Carmilla blinked at her movement and watched as Danny wove their fingers together, scratching slightly at her marred skin. Danny felt Carmilla squeeze her hand, but she never released her hold on Danny’s face. Just kept staring. Eerily. Like a jungle cat right before it pounced, latched onto its prey, and stayed there at the jugular until all life had seeped from the unfortunate animal. Danny swallowed uncomfortably.

“Who are you, Danny Lawrence?” Carmilla asked, rhetorical, thankfully, because Danny didn’t really have an answer for her.

And Danny had to smile through her fright, despite the slice she felt on her bruised upper lip—which should have been much wider than the tiny, stinging cut she felt split because of her chapped skin. She licked the sore and tasted the tang of blood, marveling at her pain; the discomfort was present but subdued, like little shrinking balls had siphoned off all of the major sensations and were disintegrating, slowly, until nothing was left but her marvelous physical constitution and a beautifully terrifying woman, clutching hold of her skull like a stress ball.

“Just a girl who’s got a thing for brown eyes, I guess,” Danny answered with a shrug, quirking that bleeding lip up into a grimace, more unsure of herself than she’d been when she’d given Carmilla the camera. That limb she’d skittered out on with the present that morning had been narrow enough to break for kindling. This? This was paper-thin gossamer, rippling and shredded beneath the weight of her risk. A risk with a woman who could shapeshift and murder.

Danny was dubious, but she tried anyway:

“I just want to help you,” Danny said.

“I believe that.”

“Thanks for letting me.”

“You shouldn’t have. Can’t you see where it’s gotten you?”

“In pretty good hands, I think,” Danny chanced, rubbing her thumb along Carmilla’s index finger.

“You’re impossible.”

“It’s scary as hell, but at least it’s an adventure,” Danny challenged. “And you’re interesting.”

“I’m a _death trap_ ,” Carmilla snarled.

“I’m still breathing.”

“Not for long,” Carmilla said, and pressed her mouth against Danny’s bleeding lips.

Danny let go of Carmilla’s hand and moved to clutch at the back of her dark head, ignoring the pain at her mouth. Her other hand flew to the woman’s hip so she could pull her closer—like on the back of the train—close, close, never close enough. And Carmilla sucked her bloody lip until it puffed up, twice its usual size, just like her pupils, blown to double diameters because Carmilla was _kissing_ her, and holding her like she was something precious enough to protect. When Carmilla pulled away Danny winced, wondering why the woman had taken teeth to a lip that was already rubbed raw.

Carmilla’s kiss hurt.

It hurt so badly Danny feared she was missing something, something big that might force her to rethink the whole making-out-with-a-practical-stranger-in-a-public-restroom-thing.

“Was that… to increase my pheromone output?” Danny asked, tangling her fingers in Carmilla’s hair, kneading the top of her skull.

“What’s the answer that’ll allow it to happen again?” Carmilla evaded, nuzzling at Danny’s chin, working her way up her face until she booped her nose against Danny’s.

“It definitely won’t be happening again here,” Danny grumbled. “On a grimy bathroom floor.”

“You’re no fun,” Carmilla answered.

“You’re right. Sanitation drains all the fun out of everything.”

Carmilla’s trademark smirk returned. They sat momentarily, adjusting to the not-so-sudden shift in their relation.

“You think you can walk?” Carmilla finally asked.

“Yeah,” Danny answered, untangling herself from Carmilla’s embrace. “But my shirt is going to need some time to dry.”

“Who needs a shirt?” Carmilla winked, extending a hand to pull Danny up from the floor.

“Most people,” Danny said, grabbing a hold of the counter for support.

“You’re not quite like most people I’ve encountered,” Carmilla said, wringing the shirt out. Rouge-tinted water splashed down from the fabric in heavy streams. Carmilla unfurled the garment and indicated two jagged rips across the front. No way was Danny wearing that without an indecent exposure charge.

“Huh,” Danny said, less than excited about going commando beneath her jacket for the remainder of the day and heading to Hallstatt or—wherever they were heading to.

“Guess we’ll have to improvise?” Danny said.

“Looks like it. Your coat has seen better days, too.”

“What?” Danny asked, turning over her shoulder to look in the mirror. The pain flared up instantly. “Gah…” Danny doubled over, clutching at her arm.

“It’s just some small rips over the back, don’t kill yourself,” Carmilla said, easing Danny back upright. “Needle and thread can fix it no problem. The stains, however...”

“It doesn’t look weird, does it? Like, not to draw attention, I mean,” Danny asked, turning back to face the mirror. Her hair was a holy terror; her face scratched up and shockingly pink. But Danny could see the lacerations closing, the scabs fading to barely discernible scars. She gathered her hair up and looped it as best she could with an injured arm, tucking the majority of it into her coat collar.

Carmilla moved behind her to meet her gaze in the reflection.

“I’ll cover you, Cinna-stick.”

“You hardly come up to my shoulder-blades,” Danny argued.

But then Carmilla slipped her arms around Danny’s waist and buried her face into the back of Danny’s coat. And _finally_ , the woman was right where Danny needed her to be.

“Then I’ll just walk really close behind you, Gingersnap,” Carmilla mumbled into the fabric.

Close enough to hold. Close enough to watch like a hawk.

Danny smiled, opening the split in her lip again.

It was a good hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Day after Christmas everyone! I hope your holidays were lovely and festive and cheerful and bright! And if they weren't, I hope you can take just a smidgen of happy away with this chapter! 
> 
> A brief disclaimer: the reason I put my deadline on for Christmas was because I knew I'd be going out of town for several days after, and will not have time to write or post like I usually do :'( 
> 
> But I can see the end of the tunnel, the dim light beckoning me toward the final page on my Word Processor. I'm nearly there! But I wanted to give you regular readers a heads up, so you'd forgive my inconsistency over the forthcoming week or so. In the meantime, enjoy suspicious!Danny and grateful-but-can't-express-herself!Carm. 
> 
> (Also, I think AO3 took out my page break, so formatting for this might be a little wonky with dashes running through the middle of this chappie).


	18. Chapter 18

Two hundred Euro.

That’s about how much Carmilla believed she owed Danny for feeding her, clothing her, transporting her, and—well, one could hardly put a price on saving someone else’s life. There would be another compensation for that rather imbecilic act of sacrifice.

Ever since mother, Carmilla hated owing anyone anything. But with Danny, she felt she’d never be out of debt.

Not to mention the fact that her gifted camera had held up during the struggle. Kudos to Danny for purchasing a heavy-duty piece with a lens-cap worth a damn. Tack on the price of the camera, and Carmilla was looking at a steeper sum:

Two hundred and fifty Euro.

Pennies really, but she felt awful for making Danny spot their transportation fare, especially with all the transfers on the trains.

She sat across and diagonal from the ginger woman, who’d chosen an open collection of four seats facing each other for their excursion (retreat) northwest. It was their second transfer, a relatively short journey toward one stop short of the station in Obertraun. Danny had managed to purchase tickets and seat herself with little assistance on the train they’d taken before this one; then had fallen directly asleep, just that little bit of exertion tuckering her out of her characteristic energies. Which was all well and good for them both; it gave Danny time for the amulet to work its voodoo, and Carmilla time to think.

But she’d fallen into study of Danny once more; any calculating strategies or lies or fanciful narratives she could’ve concocted falling to the wayside in favor of appreciating that Gingersnap was still _breathing_ , no thanks to her. Carmilla had accidentally shaken Danny's injured shoulder to awaken her for their final transfer, and had spent the walk between platforms sulking while Danny tried to reassure her with, “Hey, easy mistake,” “It’s _okay_ ,” “Oh my God, you didn’t rip my arm off, alright?”

And they’d been silent for the first fifteen minutes of this ride. Danny’d taken the aisle seat, and had stretched her legs out and across to the opposite seat facing her, propped herself up against the bundle of Carmilla’s coat that Carmilla felt was only courteous to offer. Carmilla herself looked out the window at the staggering steepness of the Alps, unwilling to stare again at Danny while the woman was conscious. They’d not discussed the fight, nor the fact that Carmilla had the ability to shift into an overlarge feline. Nor had they discussed their kiss, arms and legs akimbo on the floor of a gross train station toilet, when Carmilla had licked at Danny’s split lip like her blood was the corn-syrupy remains of a sticky, gooey, delectable popsicle melting in summertime.

Carmilla noted Danny’s shift from the corner of her eye, but daren’t glance her way for fear of the accusation she’d certainly find.

“Hey,” Danny said, nudging Carmilla’s thigh with her foot.

“Hmm?” Carmilla stared at her fingers, wondering if she’d really have to confess to Danny that she was actually—

“So when were you gonna tell me you were a vampire?”

—royalty.

Oh…

Oh, _shit_.

“V-vampire?” Carmilla questioned, and it might’ve helped if her voice hadn’t skittered up an octave and her stutter was less pronounced.

“We can do the whole, listing of the characteristics bull if you’d prefer,” Danny grumbled, unzipping her jacket so that she could fiddle with the amulet still draped around her neck.

And Carmilla could see the barest dip and swell of her chest, Gingersnap having chosen to go bare underneath that coat until they got to a place they could buy something relatively cheap. It was a lot for her, the confrontation, the kiss, being on the lamb—and Danny looked delicious and she hadn’t had a drop of blood since the previous afternoon.

It was almost one p.m., and she was a bit dazed.

“I’m not a fool,” Danny muttered, shifting about in her space with a wince that had Carmilla standing and scooting, flopping into the open window seat next to Danny.

“I… apologize for getting you into this,” Carmilla began, wanting to reach out and touch her, scared to, ashamed.

“I don’t understand,” Danny said, twisting to face her, more bereft than Carmilla had ever seen her. “I thought you—I thought we—I...” Danny looked away. “… don’t know what I thought.

Danny focused on her lap, practically pouting. It wasn’t an expression the Gingersnap wore well.

“Can you tell me what you think, and then I’ll… elaborate on what I can?” Carmilla asked, daring to inch closer, like yesterday when she’d wrapped her up on the flat kitchen table in an abandoned Alpine estate.

“It would just… explain so much,” Danny whispered, shutting her eyes tightly, shaking her head, as if she were wanting to rid the reality from her brain. “Why you—why I feel this way.”

“What way is that?” Carmilla couldn’t keep from asking.

Couldn’t keep from _hoping_.

Dammit.

“Carmilla?” Danny asked, ducking in and pulling her closer, cradling her cheek in her palm as she pressed their lips together.

It was a lot nicer, sitting in semi-cushioned seats instead of on the bottom of the bathroom. And Danny’s health had improved, for she moved more boldly, skirting her tongue over Carmilla’s lips and humming her pleasure, pulling Carmilla so close against her body until she felt—

A spike.

Something pointy and hard and deadly tipped right between her breasts.

Like she’d just been tricked into getting nearer to Danny, because the woman was _damn_ smart.

“Hey!” Carmilla tore herself from Danny’s lips, breathed her fear there for the briefest of moments. Because she was a recovering vampire but Danny was _special_ , and with that necklace wrapped around her and a wooden stake in her hand she could do some significant damage.

“Answers,” Danny grit, clasping hold of Carmilla from behind until the stake pressed so deeply into her body that it ripped the fabric of her shirt. “Now.”

“This is… unexpected, given your reaction in the bathroom.”

“I could hardly move, and was in a confined space. My brain cells weren’t exactly firing on all cylinders after my head had been knocked against a train rail. Spill,” Danny commanded.

“I’m a vampire,” Carmilla shrugged.

“Got that,” Danny seethed. “What’s your name?”

“Carmilla.”

“Your real name.”

“Carmilla, I swear. That’s my name. It’s an adaption of my given name, Mircalla von Karnstein.”

“Why are you in Graz?” Danny pushed, roughly grabbing hold of the neck of Carmilla’s jacket.

“My mother brought me. She’s very important and very powerful,” Carmilla mumbled, and then, more quietly: “I do what she says.”

“Or else she’ll send supernatural bloodhounds after you?”

“Ten points to you, Ginger Spice” Carmilla replied, back to caustic.

“Why is she here? Is she a vampire, too?”

“Yes, she is. We go on holiday every Christmas season.”

“I doubt this is just a vacation,” Danny spat, low and murderous and _betrayed_.

Carmilla recognized that tone all too well.

“What are you here for?” Danny continued.

“I wanted to get away from her. I wasn’t lying about the gallery.”

“Not _you_ ,” Danny sneered. “The both of you. Why, during Christmas? Are there more of you?”

Carmilla squirmed against the seat but Danny held her fast, gripping the fabric of her coat so tightly she could hear the individual threads tearing with every tug. Danny was determined, and Carmilla was cornered.

“We come during Christmas so I can parade around the city. I have siblings, but I don’t know where they are. They’re not part of the plan,” Carmilla sneered, thinking back to all the times William had tormented her at Christmastide. “I’m… _pretty_ , as mother keeps reminding me,” Carmilla mumbled, feeling Danny’s grip pull harder against the collar of her shirt. “People are more vulnerable, to me. More vulnerable during the holidays. That’s why she always kidnaps someone during the Christmas season.”

“Kidnaps?” Danny repeated, her brow furrowed to disappointed confusion. “Why?”

…

…

…

“Sacrifice,” Carmilla whispered, staring down at the stake in Danny’s hand.

Danny held it so tightly her knuckles turned white, but her wrist stayed stock still, never wavered an inch. Tough as nails, Danny Lawrence. Played Carmilla like a guitarist, plucking heart strings and hitting all the right notes, to pull her close enough to kiss, close enough to get that stake aimed right at her heart.

Damn her strategy.

Damn _her_.

And mortals believed vampires were the evil geniuses.

“We have a limited amount of time between the Solstice and the New Year,” Carmilla murmured, wondering if she could shatter the window behind her and fling herself into the gulch by the tracks. “The Deep One requires sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice,” Danny clenched her jaw and breathed through her nostrils, her cheek twitching in anger. “And you help with this?”

“I _have_ to.”

“No. You don't _have_ to do anything. That's not how life works.”

“Bullshit,” Carmilla argued, wanting nothing more than to rip into her, kiss her senseless, drink her dry, take her hard against the back of this damnable train seat—

“There’s no one else in this car, stop looking for help,” Danny demanded.

“Oh, so you chose this one on purpose, did you?” Carmilla snapped.

“Maybe,” Danny returned. “Seems strategy and doe eyes are the only ways to get you to tell the truth. And how does this sacrifice thing work, anyway? You gonna tie me up and split my ribs open?”

“What?” Carmilla asked, flabbergasted to amusement. She chuckled, all the while feeling the tip of the stake dig deeper into her skin. “Gingersnap, you are way off base.”

“Then what the hell have you been doing with me for the past three days?!”

“Flirting, if it wasn’t obvious!” Carmilla screeched. “Avoiding my mother was an added bonus. Or were the Changelings that nearly took us _both_ out just a clever ruse on my part?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” Danny returned hotly, pressing Carmilla back against the window, hovering over her menacingly. “You tell me you come to pick up women for sacrifice after I’ve just been beaten bloody by a pack of rancid, Big-Foot posers. What logical conclusion would you expect me to draw, huh?”

“Danny, that’s not what this is about,” Carmilla sighed. “There’s so much more to this than the snippets you’re piecing together.”

“Enlighten me, then.”

“Perhaps if you remove that stake from my torso, we’ll be on more even ground.”

“And lose my only advantage?” Danny returned, but this time, Carmilla heard the quaver in her voice. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

And briefly, Carmilla saw the woman she’d kissed in the bathroom. Timid, for all of her fortitude, and amazed and charged by the mystery Carmilla represented.

“You’ve been lying to me all along,” Danny said through clenched teeth.

“I was trying to keep you safe, you imbecile!” Carmilla replied, grabbing for the closest part of Danny she could reach.

Even though it pierced her skin, she pulled Danny closer by her olive jacket. She _needed_ Danny to understand this.

“I don’t believe you,” Danny answered. “I’ve had too many people promise things and not come through. Too many people lie to me. And you could murder me with your pinky finger. I can’t take chances with liars.”

Carmilla bugged her eyes and squirmed back against the stake, pressing, pressing, pressing—

“Funny, coming from someone I could argue _kissed_ me to death,” Carmilla mumbled, eyes locked on the stake at her chest. With any luck, her comment would hit where it hurt.

“What would you have done, in my place?” Danny answered desperately, on the verge of tears. “To find out this maddening, beautiful woman with a magic necklace and wavy hair and these—these _seduction_ eyes is a vampire content to suck blood off of my busted lip on an empty bathroom floor? And I can’t know if what I’m feeling is real, or if it’s just some weird, vampiric subjugation thing.”

She was so strong and so righteous and so beautiful and this is exactly what Carmilla hadn’t wanted. Hadn’t wanted Danny broken in front of her. Even miles away, mother was ruining the best thing about Carmilla’s Christmas.

“What are you feeling?”

“Don’t,” Danny warned, her fingers loosening around the stake. “You know.”

“You have to understand, I am bound to her. That amulet? It’s an anchor for a reason,” Carmilla made an earnest attempt at explaining. “Whatever you’re feeling, whatever this is—” Carmilla continued, brushing her forehead up against Danny’s.

“There’s no tricks here. No… vampire hocus pocus that makes me want you, or the reverse, if that’s what you’re concerned with. I just… I couldn’t stand to be a part of it this year, so I ran. I’m really good at running, but I’ll have to go back. I will. They’ll keep coming after me. But then I bumped into you and it was like—you were the Christmas gift I never wished for. One I didn’t believe I’d ever receive. I’ve done awful things in the past and am annually complicit in a ritual that I’ve never agreed with, but you have to believe me when I tell you I’m backed in a corner.

“I never wanted to drag you into any of this. That’s why I didn’t tell you anything. I had to keep you safe because you’re _breakable_ , Danny, and if mother finds you with me, then—”

The stake clattered to the floor and Danny dipped to meet her, kissed her, for real—no monsters chasing them and no one dying on a bathroom floor and no one trying to trick the other—just a sweet, reassuring pressure of lips that promised so much support Carmilla was on the verge of weeping. Danny pulled her back from her smushed position against the window as the loudspeaker blared above them and the train began to slow; but Carmilla couldn’t focus on anything other than Danny’s hand on her waist and her own hand, climbing to the hem of Danny’s coat and skirting underneath. She opened her mouth to slip her tongue over and past Danny’s lips, circled the bare skin of her navel underneath Danny’s bulky jacket with her chilly fingers. She was almost glad the Changelings had ripped Danny’s shirt to shreds.

She heard the brakes of the train squeal and rumble as Danny pulled away from her, flushed and satisfied and not broken.

Whole, and holding Carmilla like she was the fragile one. Those classic cheekbones and that flame of hair and that stout chin, a woman prone to caution but susceptible to forgiveness—so damn _human_. Carmilla squinted and quirked her smile, tucking tangled waves of hair behind Danny’s ears.

“Seduction eyes, was it?”

“Get off of me,” Danny muttered, and pushed her off of her lap (because of course she’d climbed atop Mount Ginger Goddess during their saliva exchange).

Danny hopped up from the seat and put her hands on her hips, then ran agitated, bashful fingers over the crown of her head to push her hair back. Fidgeting with impassioned adrenaline like a coyote on speed.

“I still need answers,” Danny said, towering over Carmilla.

“Of course,” Carmilla complied, reaching for the camera before they exited the car. She paused, and sighed, then decidedly picked up the stake that had rolled underneath their seat. She whistled at Danny, then held the whittled wood out to her, blunt end first.

“What’s this?”

“I want you to trust me,” Carmilla shrugged, hating the feel of the splintery pieces in her palm. It was like holding onto a scorpion, never knowing if the thing would strike. “And this seemed like the right move.”

Danny took the stake and returned it to her utility belt; she’d lost a fair bit of equipment in the scuffle, but the dagger and hammer remained, a pouch full of screws, nails, assorted small metal pieces Carmilla had no interest in, and now, a wooden stake.

And the amulet. Can’t forget the amulet.

“Thanks,” Danny said, before taking Carmilla’s hand and marching her out of the open doors and onto the platform.

“What’s this?” Carmilla asked, swinging their joined hands.

“Trust goes both ways,” Danny answered, as she led them over to the small building that housed the Hallstatt ferry service.

“Thanks, Xena.”

“No problem… Fangface.”

Carmilla may have wanted to murder her, but she also wanted to keep holding her hand. She kept her mouth shut and went with the latter option.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys, what a whirlwind of a few days. When I say out-of-town, I mean family-mandated-excursion. So forgive the typos on this one. I know there's gonna be some. I'm posting fifteen stories up with a glass of wine in my hand as I casually try to get a little breathing room. Phew. Hhhapppy nearly New Year! May your resolution be plausible and attainable. 
> 
> And I'm gonna get to replying to your comments eventually, I promise! My priotiryt for right now is posting!
> 
> P.S. Has anyone ever posted on a balcony with 30 mph winds before? No? Just me? I would advise against it.


	19. Chapter 19

“I can’t believe your mother fed your girlfriend to a gigantic piranha,” Danny said, her strong jaw gaping from Carmilla’s story.

It wasn’t a period Carmilla liked to recount, so verbalizing it had proved a challenge. She left out gaps that seemed apparent, but Danny, not bearing witness to a majority of the history, kept interrupting with questions. But by the time they’d been ferried halfway across the Hallstätter See (an immense, glass-like lake that separated a village of less than 1,000 inhabitants from the nearest rail station), Carmilla had hit every major event: murder in 1698, immediate vampiric turn, some ravaging, some mellowing (after having fallen for Elle), then mother’s discovery, Elle’s death, her own internment. The bombs of WWII obliterated her prison but mother found her once again and sent her back to the old ways; but this time, Carmilla did so with far more reluctance and surreptitious interference. Even after half a century of torture, killing the only girl she’d ever loved had more damaging effects on Carmilla’s cooperation than mother ever foresaw.

Carmilla conveniently left out the princess part, hoping to save the complication of explaining the duties of royalty. She didn’t need one more strike against herself in Danny’s book.

“I know it’s wrong,” Carmilla said noncommittally, leaning against the railing of the ferry, the boat’s prow slicing through the aquatic Alpine mirror. It was an interesting visual double, seeing rippling mountains below her and static mountains above her. She pulled her camera from the depths of her jacket and crouched against the front railing, adjusted a setting or two, then snapped. If anything, she’d at least get a decent shot out of the ride.

“But I can’t really do anything about it,” Carmilla finished, her eye still attached to the viewfinder. She twisted for another shot, only to stop on a blurried bit of red hair and pale skin. Danny pulled the camera down from Carmilla’s face by the lens and leveled a serious stare her way.

“I disagree.”

“That’s unsurprising,” Carmilla huffed, wondering about the probability of an avalanche burying her at this exact moment.

“I get that you’re afraid to fight. That was…” Danny trailed off, unable—as Carmilla had been for decades—to vocalize the draconian level of punishment mother had seen fit for her rebellion. “What your mom did to Elle, in front of you? Then what you went through after? Traumatic doesn’t begin to describe it.”

And this was why Carmilla didn’t like thinking about the past, much less retelling it. Danny’s pity was almost as sickening as her flash of betrayal earlier on the train.

“But I mean, I could—you’d have _help_ this time—”

“Let me stop you right there, Gingersnap,” Carmilla said, shaking her head over the prow. “As noble as you think you are, you can’t take on my mother. You’ll die. And then I’ll die, again, probably. It’s not pleasant.”

“We took on those security guards of yours and got out okay,” Danny said gently.

“I got staked in the gut and you’ve got a broken shoulder. And a concussion, probably. Without that amulet, we’d both be toast,” Carmilla said, pointing toward the necklace at Danny’s chest. “No, less than toast. We’d be the carbon dust toast turns into, and then catches fire on the bottom of the toaster oven. We’d be worse than toast. We’d be ash.”

“Are you hungry for toast or something?” Danny asked, smiling into the wind.

“Neither of us ate breakfast,” Carmilla grumbled, resting her head on her crossed arms, the sway of the boat wreaking havoc on her empty stomach.

“We’ll get some food, first thing,” Danny said.

“We’ll get some clothes, and then get cleaned, first thing,” Carmilla argued, glancing up at Danny. “I don’t like seeing you covered in blood.”

Danny gave herself an instant appraisal; she was splotched up with dried Changeling intestine, human blood, railroad grease, melted snow. Her jeans were shredded and her jacket had a number of rips in the back. Not to mention the bloodied shirt they’d discarded back at the train station. A shopping excursion (which Danny would probably be paying for again, of course) would be first on the agenda once they docked.

Danny grabbed Carmilla’s hand, and curled it over the frozen railing. She rubbed her calloused thumb against the smooth, youthful skin, Carmilla thought back on her ages, the decades spent and the proprieties breached (specifically about the likelihood of a countess falling for a woodworker).

“The amulet,” Danny continued, staring down at her torso. “You said it doesn’t heal.”

“It doesn’t _just_ heal,” Carmilla clarified.

“It… makes you better? In a bunch of different ways? I felt like—fighting those things, I felt like I was invincible.”

“The amulet magnifies what’s inherently a part of you. You’re already exceptionally strong; for a human, your strength, your courage, your _recklessness_ , increases tenfold. Same goes for the healing,” Carmilla explained, reaching up to run a finger across a diagonal slash fading over Danny’s nose. “You’ve got a scratch and it looks like it happened two weeks ago. The amulet amplifies pieces of yourself, physical, mental, emotional. It’s still you, but enhanced. That’s why mother gave it to me.”

“To make you better?” Danny’s eyebrows squinched together, apparently not following.

“To solidify my career as professional distraction,” Carmilla extrapolated, turning to rest her back against the rail, dropping Danny’s hand.

She crossed her arms over her torso and huffed her frustration. The mountains seemed a lot less picturesque when the focus of the conversation concerned one’s professional ability to manipulate.

“Vampires can seduce, enthrall, and entice with superior and inescapable prowess on a one-to-one level. When I wear the amulet, all eyes are on me. No one notices when mother snatches up a cute little streusel for her nefarious machinations,” Carmilla clenched her fists. “It’s not just me, either. Mother has an amulet as well. Everyone in my family does. It does everything we can already do, but _better_ ; we sprint past lightspeed, lift MAC trucks with an index finger… it stalls aging, which is why we heal so quickly, and with the amulet, it’s immediate. My guts could be outside of my body but if I looped that thing over my neck,” Carmilla snapped her fingers, “—instant surgery. It’s how I got to you so quickly after you’d carted me off of the platform in Graz. Don’t do that again, by the way.”

“What, save your ass?” Danny smirked.

“Exactly. You should be watching out for yourself. Even more so now that you’ve been attacked,” Carmilla stared at her boots. “I don’t blame you, you know, for what you did back on the train. It was probably one of your smarter moves.”

“I’m sorry,” Danny muttered, gazing at the mountains. “I just… I _knew_ there was something off about you, ever since I met you. And I couldn’t tell if I was just suspicious of a crush or—”

“Gingersnap, do you have a crush on me?”

Danny’s cheeks darkened and she coughed, then scratched the back of her neck anxiously.

“Hey,” Carmilla said, nudging Danny’s nervous form beside her. “It’s not unrequited, you know.”

“I figured that when you attacked my face in the bathroom.”

“Got a little carried away?” Carmilla rumbled low, trying to skirt the edges of trouble.

“Probably the biggest hint to the vampiredom was sucking on my busted lip like it was a Big Gulp from a Seven Eleven. And then _biting_ it again,” Danny pouted, puffing her lips up for emphasis.

“Put those away unless you intend to use them,” Carmilla winked.

Danny released her pout, then turned sideways to face Carmilla, her heavy boots thudding against the deck of the ferry.

“I just… I guess I should’ve let you explain first. But after all the other stuff that’s been happening, I couldn’t run the risk of you tricking me again. I needed to know if—if you liked me okay because you really did, not because you planned on eating me or taking me to some carnivorous fish. I... I really hope I didn’t freak you out with that stake. Or, I guess, I meant to, but now I—”

“I’ve been through a lot worse,” Carmilla mumbled. “As you now know.”

“I’m still sorry,” Danny said. “I mean it. I’m pretty bullheaded when it comes to certain things, but I do try to own up to my mistakes.”

“The fact that you held a stake up to my heart makes you smart, Lawrence. I might not have been the big baddie to snap your neck, but it’ll only be a matter of time before my mother comes for you, too. She always takes the things I—well, let’s just say you’re not in the best company.”

Danny nodded her understanding.

“I get that the amulet’s strong, but it can’t make her unstoppable,” Danny argued.

Carmilla chuckled sardonically. “Gingersnap, I never even upped my thrall on you _without_ wearing the amulet. If I put that thing on and tried, you’d be arrested for debauchery to the Nth degree. And I’m young. With mother and her power, you’d be helpless. Hell, Graz, or all of Styria, might be helpless.”

“It’s not just me,” Danny countered. “You don’t know this, but Chuck and Asha—”

“An aging warlock and his bewitching bride are hardly the cavalry support we’d need to do battle with my mother’s actual _army_ of undead horrors.”

“You knew?”

“They put blood in my mug and threatened me with a stake to the heart the morning after the Christmas party. Said if I laid a finger on you, I was deader than I currently am. Then proceeded to tell me how lovely a house guest I was, which, honestly, I’ve never gotten before.”

“You were only on your best behavior because you’d been out in the cold all day,” Danny replied smugly.

“Desperate times,” Carmilla returned.

“But what if we—”

“Danny,” Carmilla interrupted, too tired and too heartsick to prolong the argument. “Can’t we just… enjoy being here, for a little while? We lost the guards, there’s snow on the mountain, and I haven’t had a Christmas since I needed to breathe. Let me take a picture of this lake,” Carmilla nodded off toward the mountain water. “And let me kiss you, let me relish the fact that I didn’t get you killed.”

Carmilla hopped up on the lowest railing and placed her fingers over Danny’s nearly-healed cheek, tilted her head up to brush her lips over Danny’s. She stepped down and turned to face the mountains, praying that Danny would grant her request.

“You want to keep running a little longer,” Danny mumbled, tucking Carmilla into her embrace, folding her arms protectively over the smaller woman’s abdomen.

As if Gingersnap could ever truly protect her.

“Run with me,” Carmilla answered, as they passed the dipping outline of a mountain and finally glimpsed Hallstatt for the first time.

The chalets were completely white-washed, their gabled roofs and extended eaves blanketed with several inches worth of snow. Even from a mile away, Carmilla could see the fractured slabs from ice flows butting into the buffering latticework at some of the lake houses, the boats bobbing along and straining at their frozen ties. The mountains rose steeply above the small village, so that those few buildings not stacked on the flat land that leveled out at the lakeside had to be constructed practically _inside_ the mountain itself. No amount of stilts and beams could support housing on an incline so severe. Nearly every building she could see possessed a wide balcony for lakeside and mountain viewing, large brackets to support the outdoor walkways and stylized, colorful weatherboarding.

The big windows and extensive moldings reminded Carmilla of the village below her father’s schloss; how the women would throw open the shutters every time their men would return home from the woods. From gathering, from hunting, from chopping the firewood.

It was a fairytale, and Carmilla had her knight in shining tool belt right beside her. Could anyone truly blame her for being swept away, for wanting to outrun mother’s controlling clutches for one day more?

“It’s gorgeous,” Danny whispered, nuzzling the crown of Carmilla’s head.

“Try to think of it as a Christmas vacation,” Carmilla murmured bleakly.

“I won’t stop worrying.”

“Try,” Carmilla said, and brought Danny’s barely bruised knuckles up to her lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!!!!!
> 
> Please, copy/paste this link into your browser if you want to know where the inspiration for this chapter came from, because I'm pretty sure I'd sell an important organ to get to go to Hallstatt one Christmas. Check out the 4th pic!
> 
> http://www.tourismontheedge.com/hidden-places/europe/hallstatt-austrias-most-beautiful-lake-town.html 
> 
> So excited and happy to post the next installment of our adventure! We've run a bit over the deadline I've set for my festive Christmas season cheer, but there should be some lingering fuzzy holiday feels what with New Year's Eve happening tomorrow night! (Consequently, don't expect an update New Year's Day. I love y'all, but mama needs her bubbly). 
> 
> We're rounding the corners into the third act, but there will be one or two fluff-heavy chapters coming forth. Think of this as the sickening montage you get towards the middle of the Hallmark/ABCFamily Xmas films. It's there for a reason, besides the cuteness factor that makes you gurgle inarticulately and cringe at the same time. Thank you for your readership!


	20. Chapter 20

“I thought that man was going to run us out of his store,” Danny muttered, hauling two bags of winter weather wear through the front door of the Hallstatt fixer-upper. “He was eyeing you like you were a pickpocket from a Dickens novel.”

“Our current attire does point to some rather hard living, CinnaStick,” Carmilla returned, plucking at the strips of fabric hanging from where the arm of her coat used to be.

What wasn’t ripped on the two of them was stained, clotted with dried grey matter or dampened by melted snow. Carmilla’s hygiene could occasionally border on the questionable when left to her own devices, but it was another thing entirely to be wearing the remains of the creature who’d once escorted her to the Prime Minister’s Independence Day Celebration.

“I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to get out of my clothes so fast,” Danny said, chucking her olive jacket across the hardwood and reaching for the band of her sports bra.

“Really?” Carmilla purred, sidling up beside Danny with a lecherous grin in tow.

“Uhhh…” Danny stuttered, stumbling over a bag in her haste to put some distance between their bodies. Her hands fell from the band at her chest and she staggered away, blushing furiously. “Yeah… because, uhm, gross Changeling goo, and, ha, blood, you know.”

“Yes,” Carmilla replied, slinking slowly toward Danny. Carmilla tugged bits of her tattered shirt off of her body. Oh, Gingersnap had not even begun to witness the extent of her _seduction eyes_.

Carmilla glided ever nearer Danny, whom she’d backed all the way into the far wall. Carmilla touched her abdomen and skittered her fingers over the waistband of Danny’s jeans, much to Danny’s body-blushing chagrin.

“So…”

“So…?” Carmilla drawled, inching closer to Danny’s lips.

“Dibs on shower first!” Danny said, surging back toward the hallway like a jet plane on the runway.

Carmilla snickered to herself, proud of her mini-conquest.

“Point one, Karnstein.”

Carmilla decided to use the moment to pop out and make a quick feed. But before she did, Carmilla wandered around the Alpine cottage, noting the enormous hearth, the sparse, utilitarian kitchen, the cozy, overstuffed couch, the rough-hewn dinner table and accompanying benches. Propped in the corner were the cases to some instruments, and nestled neatly in a china hatch was enough crockery and cutlery to present a competent (if not extravagant) dinner for the eight-seater table. No centerpiece, but Carmilla didn’t really think Danny cared much for that kind of décor.

But nice and clean as it was, the space was certainly missing something. Carmilla slipped out the front door with a two-part mission, hating herself for letting six-foot sex-on-a-stick turn her into a simpering holiday dunderhead.

 

* * *

 

“Okay!” Carmilla heard Danny holler a brief while later. “You’re good to—oh,” Danny grinned, peaking her head around the corner of the hallway. “How’d you get that in here so fast?”

It was nothing fancy; just a piney sapling from a ways up the mountain that took all of two seconds to knock over; and thirty seconds to drag back. Getting enough pinecones, and berries, and flowering winter heath to drape over the branches had posed the real challenge. She’d wanted to be finished by the time Danny got out of the shower—

And completely assaulted her pupils in the meanwhile. Danny stepped from around that corner, a vision of freckled leg and damp towel, sopping auburn hair and pink cheeks.

_Oh sweet Wise Men from the East, restrain me—_

“It’s great!” Danny marveled over the tree, the tip of it reaching just above her head. The jeweled purples and magentas of the heath brightened the cool emerald of the needles, a bold, diminutive rainbow of coniferous fire hazard.

“We don’t have a topper, but I think it’s just perfect,” Danny surmised.

“I can be a topper—”

“What was that?” Danny asked.

“N-nothing,” Carmilla coughed, staring directly at the trunk of the tree. Maybe if she stared hard enough she’d be able to shape shift _into_ a tree, and then her mortification would be complete.

“What’s wrong?”

“Not a thing,” Carmilla lied, thankful, oh blessedly grateful, that she’d snacked on a ranting woman who’d been giving the café staff down the road a hard time for a minor mess-up while they’d been slammed, two days before Christmas. Because if Carmilla hadn’t curbed her bloodlust even slightly, Danny would be getting bitten and kissed and touched and that offending towel would be _done for_.

“You’re sure?” Danny moved nearer to her, reached out a hand to place on her shoulder. “You just look a little… I don’t know. Is it the tree? Are you hungry, still?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Carmilla snapped, shirking Danny’s touch from her shoulder. Of course she was alright, she’d just gone and whacked down a tree twice her size and drug it into the apartment all for some pretty girl, because she can’t seem to trample out that romanticism she claims she doesn’t have, because Danny looks beautiful next to the green of the trees and maybe Carmilla just wants a picture—for the love of all things festive!

_She’s fine._

“Okay,” Danny mumbled from behind her. “But if we’re being honest, I can’t remember having breakfast, either. It’s afternoon and I’m _famished_.”

Danny pulled Carmilla’s dark hair over her neck and placed her lips against Carmilla’s shoulder.

_Not fine! The opposite of fine!_

Carmilla stiffened, mesmerized by the soapy scents mixing with the pine, by Danny’s healed, silken mouth working its way up the column of her neck and tickling at the juncture of her jawline, those devilish incisors _biting_ her earlobe—

“God,” Carmilla huffed, reaching above to pull Danny’s wet head closer. She shut her eyes and backed into Danny, practically gurgling from the attention Gingersnap was giving her neck. “If I bring a forest in here, will this keep happening?”

“I make no promises,” Danny mumbled into her ear, licking the shell of it like Carmilla was some Yule-themed peppermint treat. “But I can promise—”

Carmilla heard a _swoosh_ , then tore her eyes open, only to see that cursed towel dropped right in front of her, pooling in a suggestive pile on the hardwood.

_Gingersnap was asking to be devoured._

“—that I won’t go down without a fight. Figuratively speaking, of course,” Danny placed a lingering, open-mouthed kiss on the bony projection of Carmilla’s clavicle, then whispered in her ear: “Point one, Lawrence.”

Before Carmilla could wrap her brain around what had just happened, Danny was gone; back down the hallway, toward the bedroom, where she was going to cover up all that leg with some jeans or some other garment Carmilla now had a personal agenda against.

“Shower’s all yours, Fangface.”

Her discomfiture morphed quickly to anger, recognizing the play for what it was.

“Bite me, Gingersnap!” she yelled, tossing the last of the heath at the tree.

“Isn’t that your job?” Danny hollered back.

Carmilla spun angrily on her heel and collected the bag with her replacement clothes, grumbling under her breath on the way to the bathroom.

She caught Danny smirking at the entrance to the bedroom opposite the bath, fully clothed and more smug than she had any right to be. It certainly didn’t help matters that the bathroom was filled with her scent, shooting Carmilla’s sensitive olfactory regions into manic overdrive.

“Do you want me to bite you?” Danny teased.

“Ugh!” Carmilla shouted, then slammed the door to the bathroom.

And maybe Carmilla spent a little more time in the shower than she normally did, working out some frustration. She was damn sure not going to admit that to Danny, though.

 

* * *

 

 

After a late lunch at one of the village cafes, the pair of women strolled the perimeter of the Hallstatt lake, tromping through snowdrifts when necessary, but mainly sticking to the sidewalks and public docks where accessible. Hallstatt was more than conducive to picture-taking; photo-op spots proliferated street corners, since the bulk of the town’s revenue likely came from tourism. There were lights everywhere, candles in windows, garlands strung from building to building and flowering winter plants exploding like spectrumed vomit from window boxes. It was festiveness beyond compare.

But Carmilla, though she denied being any expert, took her time cataloging the decorations on her film camera. With more than fifty opportunities presenting themselves at every turn, Carmilla had taken perhaps three pictures during the entirety of their stroll. Danny allowed Carmilla her time, understanding that time was all Carmilla had ever desired out of the season. Time spent, time wasted, time to do as she pleased. There was a certain autonomy, a certain power in doing as she wished; so Danny didn’t feel it her place to rush Carmilla along. She’d let her have the moment, but Danny still had a job to do.

“Hey, hold up a sec,” Danny said, noting a hardware shop window.

“You go, I want to get a shot of this fountain,” Carmilla answered.

“Okay,” Danny said, nodding as Carmilla crossed the square toward a frozen fountain, icicles dripping from their exposure to direct sunlight.

“Hi there,” Danny said, speaking to the young woman behind the counter. “I’m looking to do an exterior sealant job on some windows. You got any industrial caulk?”

“Yes, that’s… aisle two. Right this way,” the attendant said, leading Danny to a far aisle. They chatted for a while about different brands and their durability against the natural forces of an Alpine winter; and though the girl—Babett—tried to option some solvents, Danny was content with a glass scraper and a bit of elbow grease. She’d learned the trick of softening caulk with a heavy duty hair dryer that cost half the price of chemical solvents back during one of her frozen winters in Canada.

Desperation, in Danny's case, begat resourcefulness.

Thankfully the attendant knew Julian, the gentleman whose cottage they were staying at. Babett ran a tab and promised to bill him for the supplies, absolving Danny of any credit charges.

Danny and the short blonde attendant were staring intently at the label of one of the caulking guns when Danny heard a feeble _click_ off to her right. And couldn’t help smiling like a goofball, when Carmilla let the camera drop around her neck as she approached.

“Hey,” Danny called, as Carmilla swaggered closer. “Got a caulking gun half price.”

“Fascinating,” Carmilla replied, though she sounded significantly less than fascinated. Carmilla was eyeing Danny like she expected her to dart off behind a wall at any moment, as if they’d signed up to play hide-and-seek in a hardware store. She’d then turn her bored stare to Babett, who was holding the caulking gun like a first line of defense. Danny was waiting on Carmilla to bare her fangs at the cowering woman.

“I’ll just be another minute getting rung up,” Danny said apologetically. “You can go on ahead without me, if you want.”

“Nope, I think I’ll stay right here with you,” Carmilla said, taking Danny’s shirt sleeve and tugging her down the row. “What else do you need off of this aisle?”

“A box cutter. And some needle-nose pliers,” Danny said, rounding the corner as Carmilla tugged harder.

“Hey!” Danny said, stopping them roughly in front of a selection of packaged razor blades. She turned to watch Carmilla, whose head was twitching about, no doubt in search of poor Babett.

“You know jealously is one of the seven deadly sins,” Danny mumbled low, checking out her box cutter options. She selected a one-inch blade for the job, thankful Julian had sprung for the double-paned windows in the main area. She’d only have to caulk the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom windows, which were significantly smaller.

“It’s envy, technically. And good thing I’m already dead, then,” Carmilla grumped back.

“Most women might find that possessive thing attractive,” Danny said, ambling down to the display with the pliers. “But I’m not most women.”

“I’m not used to people sticking around,” Carmilla murmured. “When something better presents itself.”

“That’s just a self-deprecating excuse designed to induce pity. She was just doing her job.”

“She was checking you out.”

“I should hope so,” Danny smirked. “I do love it when cashiers check me out.”

Danny could practically hear the eye roll.

“Must you be so droll?” Carmilla snipped.

“Must you be such a spoiled-sport?”

“I’m not sorry,” Carmilla said, crossing her arms like a petulant child. “I’m easily jealous; symptomatic of immortality. I find ways, usually, to get what I want. If you haven’t already noticed, I don’t always play nice with other people.”

“I bet you have a problem with sharing,” Danny commented.

“My sister thinks so,” Carmilla said, eyeing the two tools Danny had selected.

“Well, it’s something we can work on,” Danny peered down, offering a half-smile. “For… as long as you want to hang around.”

Carmilla shrugged, apparently dissatisfied with Danny’s answer.

“Hey,” Danny leaned down and tilted Carmilla’s chin all in one deft movement, then quickly kissed her reassurance against Carmilla’s lips. “You can trust me to stick around, you know? I'm the one waiting on you to disappear.”

Carmilla didn’t answer her, just quickly kissed her again and pivoted in her boots.

“I’ll be outside when you’re finished,” Carmilla said, stuffing her hands in her pockets and ducking out the door.

And it was with great resolve that Danny marched to the counter with her items for checkout; she handled the transactions as congenially as she could, though her focus stayed with the broody woman propped against the edge of the shop window, head tucked down toward her camera.

It was Danny’s job to fix things that were broken.

And she was damn good at it.

 

* * *

 

 

“Here’s an idea,” Danny said, turning back the way they came. “I’ve only got a few more hours of daylight, and this caulking job will definitely burn a bit of that light. Why don’t you go off and take some pictures. You’ll probably like exploring the place,” Danny offered. “It’d be a lot more fun than sitting in cold silence while I scrape chemical sealant off of a bunch of window sills.”

“You don’t want to come with me?”

“I gotta get this done,” Danny said, indicating her bag. “But I’ll be back at the cottage, waiting for you, whenever you want to come back. Or you can sleep. I don’t know what your—uh, _schedule_ is like. You can have some time to yourself, or you can stay with me. Do what you want to do, okay?”

Carmilla nodded, and reached out to squeeze her hand.

“Just a few hours?” she said, nodding off in the direction of the village. “I think I saw a lift to a platform that runs out over the lakeside. And there’s an entrance to a salt mine that would look amazing in the right light, if I can wait until the sun hits the tree tops.”

“Go on,” Danny smiled. “I’ll be here.”

“Thank you, Gingersnap.”

“You are very welcome.”

They both went on their respective ways, Carmilla thrilling in her own little adventure, and Danny, scheming on the best method to charm the pants off a vampire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, everyone! Here's to 2016!
> 
> Thanks so much for following along and reading so far! Next chapter gets a little... incredibly dull (PG-13) :D  
> I think I can get away with keeping the rating at a T instead of upping it, since nothing gets too explicit. So, there's some minor spoilers for what's coming up *wink wink*
> 
> Drop a comment or critique if you care to!


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some sexy times. Nothing overly explicit, so I didn't change the rating. If anyone thinks it should be upped or violates any conditions, holla and I'll fix it.

She was going to get a blister on her holiday break. The axe handle was chaffing the dip between her forefinger and thumb, and it was starting to sting unpleasantly. Danny wondered if there was some sort of limit to the amulet, if it was only acceptable to use after a session of interspecies scuffling while fighting for the side of right. Or if she could just loop the thing around her wrist and abracadabra that crap into healing her blister, since she’d totally forgotten to get a pair of leather work gloves from the store she’d visited an hour and a half previously.

The axe head _whoosed_ through the air as she brought the tool down to split another log. There was a fully functioning radiator that she’d already given a thorough once-over, but nothing said Christmas and Year’s End without a crackling bit of burning wood in the hearth. She’d only need to split two more logs and then she’d be finished.

Julian had a radio inside that she’d set up in a small kitchen window and had tuned to a scratchy station that played jolly carols and hymns on repeat. She caught strains of German and could sing along with the French, and brightened when “Frosty the Snowman” surprisingly played in English. Her caulking job had been relatively quick, since the frigid air made scraping the preexisting sealant from the sills a very simple task.

Ambling around the outside of the house, fixing this and that, singing under her breath, made Danny consider putting in an offer on a mountain cottage; a fixer upper, of course, since that was all she could afford at the moment. But the labor would be nothing, because she’d be doing it herself. And the materials wouldn’t be overly marked up, since she had a wonderful working relationship with all of her suppliers. It would be fun, having a country retreat that Laura and Laf could come and visit on holidays, and then she and Carmilla could always drive up on the weekends whenever they needed a break from the city—

_Woah._

Perhaps she was getting a little carried away with the Yuletide festiveness.

Small country cottage property for now, weekend away with a potential vampiric girl...friend... person (with crippling commitment and mommy issues) in the very distant future.

Danny shed her jacket and repositioned the log, then placed the splitting wedge into the top of the wood. Using the blunt end of the axe she swung, allowing physics to do the work for her; the wedge fissured the log under the brunt of her strength, splitting the bark all the way down.

Danny wrestled with the pieces and delivered a few more deft whacks with her tool, tossing the now even quarters of wood over to the side and reaching for the final log.

To the sound of a mildly interested slow-clap.

Danny looked up as she huffed from her task, a trickle of sweat running down the left side of her temple.

“Now this is just exceedingly unfair,” Carmilla said, slinking lazily forward. “And here I thought I’d have to wait years to fulfill my lumberjack fantasy.”

Danny screwed up her face and let the axe head fall to the ground, embedding itself in the soggy soil.

“You’ve got a lumberjack fetish?” she asked, grimacing.

“Sure. Red flannel, big axe. Like an advert for paper towels.”

“Lacking the plaid this time,” Danny said, kneeling to gather up the logs. “But a Henley tee is pretty acceptable for outdoor work, I guess.”

The opening bars of “Man with the Bag” plodded through the speakers like a sluggish carriage horse, taking its time over the airwaves before speeding itself into the jaunty trot of the song’s jazzy tempo. Danny liked this song; she didn’t particularly care for the staticky radio reception.

“Did you get your pictures?” Danny asked.

“I did,” Carmilla returned, following dutifully behind Danny, stepping forward to open the door while her arms were full. It was a courtesy Danny didn’t suppose was habitual, considering it took her pointedly nodding towards the handle and grumbling about her load for Carmilla to even lay eyes on the door knob of the cottage.

Carmilla didn’t rush about it, either, despite Danny’s juggling of the wooden pieces and muttering about useless vampires during her journey across the cottage floor. It wasn’t until she was stacking kindling against some of the split wood that Carmilla spoke again.

“What’s this?” she asked.

Danny turned from her position at the hearth toward the table, which she’d gone about setting with some of the plates she’d found in the china hatch, and linens and candles and cutlery that were shut away in drawers. Just because they were in the mountains didn’t mean they couldn’t have a decent Christmas meal. There were some nonperishable foodstuffs in the pantry, and she could always swing down to the bakery before close of business and purchase a bread loaf half price. The meat might be an issue, but they’d had a late enough lunch as is… they could do with lighter fare, or so Danny thought.

“For dinner later?” Danny said, as if it weren’t obvious. “I rarely set the table, honestly,” Danny continued stacking the wood, then looked to either side of the hearth for a matchstick. “It seems silly to lay out a full place setting just for me. But at Christmas, I tend to do it anyway.” She struck a long-stick match and set about lighting the twigs and leafy needles she’d arranged for her starter flame, then blew on them carefully.

“But it’s nicer with two people. Get the window, will you? Don’t want to let all the heat out.”

Carmilla nodded and did as she was told, twisting the radio on the sill and turning the volume down. Danny noted the change of song, the opening notes of “The Christmas Waltz” ramping up her heart rate for some inexplicable reason.

Danny felt Carmilla approach from behind while she finagled the sticks into catching, which would then transfer their heat to the larger logs; once the first log flamed up, they’d have a fire for the rest of the evening.

“You’re going to cook?” Carmilla asked, sinking down beside Danny, her hands crawling across Danny’s waist from behind.

Danny looked over her shoulder and Carmilla kissed her instantly, turning so that she could press into the small of Danny’s back and climb the ladder of her vertebrae with a free hand, tangle her fingers into Danny’s hair and scratch delicately, like a kitten flexing its claws. Danny parted her lips when she felt Carmilla swiping her tongue across the seam, those stingy little pricks of fingernail in her scalp shooting goose pimples down her neck and over her shoulders.

“I-i-if you’re hungry,” Danny stuttered slightly.

“Not that kind of hungry.”

Danny had been sweating earlier from chopping the firewood, despite the freezing temperatures and occasional breeze. Then she’d lit the logs in a somewhat-already-heated cottage. Now, the wall of dancing warmth mere feet from her humid skin was walloping her side, assaulting her, demanding that she disrobe before she started sweating like some sauna patron.

“I noticed that mistletoe on top of the hearth,” Carmilla mumbled against her cheek, running her fingers along the hemline of Danny’s shirt. Dipping, languid and licentious, past the waistband of her jeans.

“Yeah,” Danny looked above, cataloging the weed she’d brought inside for the sake of the holiday. “It’s a true pain to kill in some of my suburban properties. Like it has any right coming through the ceiling in places like this.”

“Places like this?” Carmilla questioned, periscoping her head about the cottage.

“Yeah…” Danny answered, though her confidence wavered with the single syllable.

“You like places like this?” Carmilla questioned, kissing the tip of her nose.

“Sometimes.”

Carmilla smirked gleefully, like a little bandit who’d finally extracted some useful information, information she could use to rob Danny blind.

“Is it the seclusion?” Carmilla asked. “You just said you like having someone with you. What makes it special, all the way out here?”

“Sometimes it feels like I can create the home I never had, with the family I always wanted,” Danny answered honestly.

Carmilla blinked, seemingly surprised by her forthrightness; the muscadine brown in her pupils leveled to a coppery sheen, and her puckering lip seemed to purse and deliberate, intent and tenacious, as if Carmilla had her mind set on placing those lips over a select expanse of paling, freckled flesh.

“You know, some people think that mistletoe comes from the German word meaning _dung_.”

“Ugh,” Danny grumbled. “You are seriously killing the mood.”

“I’m just letting you know that your little Christmas traditions depend upon kissing below a semiparasitic plant that sprouts through bird feces.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me, Xena,” Carmilla said, and bent slowly, deliberately, over Danny’s sitting form, and kissed her. She popped the top button of Danny’s pants with practiced fingers, which Danny took as her cue to move this little romp off of the hardwood floor.

She rose and pulled Carmilla up by her hand, tilted her chin upwards and then cradled her face with both hands, to deliver a sweet little Christmas kiss. She then pulled the grate over the front of the fireplace; because Danny was nothing if not sensible. She turned back to a wily Carmilla.

“You’re sure?” Danny asked hotly, the shared breaths between them growing warmer by the moment, infused with vanilla and peppermint and cheerfulness and affection, so wonderful Danny refused to believe it started with a monster chasing them.

“I’d hate to think you felt obligated to sleep with me because of a poop flower.”

“Talk about a mood-killer,” Carmilla answered, dragging her by the hem of her long-sleeve tee into the bedroom of the cottage, to play out Carmilla’s rascally theatrics in bed.

Danny could only follow obediently, caught up in the thrall of Yuletide and Carmilla and utter _joy_ that she’d not experienced in years. They fell on the bed in a tumble of garments and competitive kisses, touching and groping until they could no longer tell their limbs from the opposite’s body.

“Nnngh… it’s like you’ve done this before,” Carmilla mumbled breathlessly below her.

Danny latched onto the open space of Carmilla’s throat, tugging back the neckline of her secondhand sweater, sucking and licking until the woman below her could hardly protest. Carmilla squirmed against her, rolling her hips and rubbing her lips against Danny’s ear to reciprocate. One nimble hand gravitated northerly over Danny’s waist, slinking over abs and rounding out over her breast until Danny could scare distinguish the sensation between clothing and flesh, between a daily covering and the warm, pleasurable pressure of Carmilla’s fingers.

“I need to tell you something first,” Carmilla said, but her confession was staunched by Danny’s persistent sucking, nibbling, tickling nuisance of a tongue against her neck. “Oh, God—I—”

“It’s alright,” Danny answered, swirling her thumb against a hip bone, instigating a bucking and a grinding that rendered her utterly senseless. She relinquished all trace of rational thought, caught up in sex and Yuletide and chivalry, a big bow of holiday sentiment that left her adrenaline unchecked, like some animal on a hunt.

“The only thing I need to know is that you’re okay, and I’m going to be okay while we do this,” Danny continued. “Now, can we have sex without worrying about…?” Danny pointed toward her own teeth, grinning down as she stroked a lock of hair off of Carmilla’s face.

“God, _yes_. Only biting if you ask for it. Now come on, Gingersnap,” Carmilla fidgeted impatiently below her. “Give me my Christmas present.”

Danny started tearing Carmilla’s skinny jeans off of her legs.

“What was at the top of the list?” Danny asked, coyly playing along.

“What do you think, you beautiful idiot?” Carmilla chuckled, linking her arms back around Danny’s neck. “A mind-fucking orgasm.”

“If you did it right, you could just give yourself that gift.”

“LAWRENCE!!!”

Danny shut her up quickly, with her fingers and her lips and her heart, all there in some snowed-in Alpine cottage, with all the trite accoutrements of Yuletide festivities. And it was ruthless and tender, and beautiful and combative, and all that Danny could have wished for during the holidays: a warm body rocketing beneath her and a carol somewhere far away on the radio, driving her senseless and stupid.

Her fingers were excavating something sensational, like an archaeological discovery; she tunneled carefully until she was consumed by warm, lovely darkness, until she consented to having that dark treasure lick her dry, until she allowed, begged, desired for Carmilla to take her roughly, gently, her palm banging against the headboard in rhythm with their tandem strokes.

And then Carmilla’s fangs, on her hip, on her abs, nibbling the underside of her breast and whispering across her eyelashes, retracting the moment Danny asked her to. They made love because Carmilla had something on the line, because they were racing against the clock. This was Carmilla’s chance to feel freely, and to make someone else shudder; so Danny gave herself willingly to Carmilla’s attention, to succumbing (Danny’s weakness), to being powerless (Danny’s fear), while Carmilla led and Danny followed, so attentively, so slowly… sultry, damp and deep… but her heart thudded in riveting paces, so fast she’d need a thirty-sixth note to keep time in their little Yuletide song.

_I’ll be your white knight_ , Danny mumbled, and kissed Carmilla’s jaw.

_You can’t save me,_ Carmilla swore as she dug her fingers deeper, as she cried briefly on Danny’s cheeks. As she felt what it was to be valued for just being herself, not a vampire, not a tool, not a distracting little prize.

Danny flipped them and needled Carmilla with fingers and tongue, chanted little affirmations against her thighs and ears as Carmilla climaxed to muteness. Carmilla’s touch on her body felt otherworldly (and it was). Danny swayed in the delusion of proper love-making, so lost in the movements and sensation of great sex that she forgot the woman now twisted below her was actually a creature of the night, one that she had sworn to defend her university, her city, her _home_ against.

She had always intended to rid homes of dark beings.

She never considered wanting to make her home with one.

They fell asleep early, with the late afternoon sun still streaming through the window overhead. The carols on the radio lulled them to exhausted rest, holiday anthems underscoring something compelling between them that neither could name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, not quite Hallmark material. But like, definitely within Lifetime Channel Christmas limits, I think. Nothing too scandalous, but boy, was that sappy as a Vermont syrup tree. There aren't that many sexy Christmas metaphors (trying to stay away from calling anyone a Ho ho ho). Let me take it back: there aren't that many good ones.
> 
> Anywho, continued fluff for the next chapter or so. Thanks as always for reading; any and all comments, hits, kudos, and subscriptions are muchly appreciated.


	22. Chapter 22

Danny woke first, unaccustomed to sleeping in the late afternoon. The electronic trill of sharp, streamlined beeping mixed dissonantly with the crackle and static from the radio back in the main room. She should go check it out, go tend to the fire, go mix up some food and rummage around for some tea or coffee or cocoa.

Go, go, go, go.

She rolled over and stayed, just five minutes more. Ducking her head beneath the sheet she grinned wildly, observing Carmilla’s powdered sugar eyelids and slightly gaping jaw, her fingers curled up in a fist just under her ear, a definite love bite on her bare shoulder, already healing.

_God, she was beautiful_.

Danny wanted to kiss her and allow her rest in equal parts. She pulled back the covers with care, slipped some underwear up her legs and one of the secondhand purchased flannels over her shoulders, then rose quietly. She tiptoed down the hallway toward the source of the beeping, a low battery on a cracked and bloodied mobile screen, with a small ‘one missed call’ notification blinking half-heartedly. Halfway up a mountain with crap reception, on Christmas Eve-Eve, she prayed silently it wasn’t a work call. She unlocked her phone and saw that it was just Laura, probably checking in. She hit the phone icon and waited as it rang.

“Danny!”

“Hey, Laura,” Danny said, ambling toward the fireplace. She hefted the grate back from the bricked frame so she could set another log atop the smoldering embers, tossing a few smaller sticks in there to assure the thing remained lit.

“How are you?” Danny asked.

“Me? I’m fi…, b-but Danny, you… _believe_ what… found out!” Laura squealed.

“Laura? Laura?”

“Danny! Are you… Carmilla still… together? ... talked to her?”

“Laura, you’re breaking up. I’m in the mountains and the reception is awful.”

“Carmill—and Theo said...isn’t who—secret—sure you’re okay?”

“Hey, listen, I’m fine,” Danny said hurriedly, wondering if somehow Laura had put several scattered pieces together to discover Carmilla’s vampiric identity. Laura was nosey, and Carmilla was hardly subtle, plus, with Laura’s entire vlog devoted to the paranormalities of backwoods Styria—

Her phone beeped again, the sluggish battery whining in her ear.

“Hey, hey! She told me, okay? I’m fine with it!” Danny said, articulating as clearly as she could into the dying device. “She told me about the vampire thing and I’m okay.”

“Da—sure? Wait, did… —ire?! Danny, what the—”

“Laura, I’ll see you on Christmas!” Danny tried.

“Danny… kay?”

“Laura? Laura, I’m _fine_. We’re both fine. We’ll see you soon, alright? Merry Christmas!”

“Okay, if you’re… sure. Merry Chri—wait to ask her all about it! Can’t believe—dating—Montsaurai!”

“Sure, sure,” Danny muttered, as her phone gave one last shudder and powered down, withering away like dead leaves before the first snow.

Danny puttered about the main room and lit a scented candle or two, then drew back the curtains over the kitchen sink as she rolled up her sleeves to wash her hands. Not much in the fridge, but she put the kettle on and found some block cheese and crackers, olives and a cured _hauswürstel_ —a sausage she could slice up and serve alongside the other tiny bites to form a slap-dash charcuterie plate. From the stores she found a bottle of pear cider from a _Mostheuriger_ tavern in Obertraun. Not quite her usual fare as far as a Christmas dinner was concerned, but Danny figured they could make do with what they had. There was no way she was leaving the woman in her bed any sooner than she had to.

She opened the kitchen curtains, turned the radio back up, and set to her preparations, humming along with the carols as she sliced cheese and meat in the twilight, and arranged all the servings on a wooden platter. Danny opened the cider and poured a glass, puckering at the crispness of the drink. Danny was near the sink looking for little serving forks when she heard the _click_ , whirling around and tugging her open shirt closed.

Carmilla lounged lazily at the doorjamb, silent as a shadow.

She’d wrapped herself up in one of the bed sheets, and kept her camera dangling by its strap over her chest. Danny turned her head down and brought her hand over her mouth, feeling her cheeks flush. She grinned through her fingers and shook her head, trying not to let Carmilla feel as superior as she certainly looked right now.

“Hungry?” Danny asked, putting a fork beside the selection she’d spread at the table. “It’s not much, but I…”

_Oh, to hell with it_.

“… I didn’t want to leave you just to go get groceries.”

Carmilla picked her camera back up and stepped outside the hallway, trailing one of her fingers around the dining table while Danny watched, feeling rather out of sorts, unaccustomed to the morning after actually happening at the onset of evening.

“Put your arms down,” Carmilla ordered, stopping a few feet shy of Danny. “Rest your hands on the counter top.”

“I’m not a model,” Danny mumbled shyly, running agitated fingers through her hair.

“Stop,” Carmilla said, letting the camera fall back to her torso and crossing toward Danny. She slipped her arms around Danny’s waist and kissed her sternum, nudging her back against the counter. She pulled Danny’s hands and placed them in position on the edge of the sink, the residual water from her washing bleeding into her shirt sleeves.

“I don’t want a picture of a model,” Carmilla murmured, stepping away. “I want a picture of you.”

“I don’t think—”

“Danny,” Carmilla said gently, softening to vulnerability.

Danny saw it so infrequently on her, the susceptibility, the lack of a cagey, snarky guard. A simplicity of situation that comprised Danny, aloof at the counter, and Carmilla, raw and wanting before her, made her relax infinitesimally. It was just Carmilla; her melancholy, immortal, whip-smart friend—lover—her _something_ , and all she wanted was a picture.

“Trust me, please,” Carmilla said, raising the viewfinder to her eye.

“’mkay,” Danny shrugged, and waited while Carmilla adjusted.

“Twilight and dawn are the best times for this,” Carmilla commented. “It’s hard to recreate such a soft light.”

“Fire light won’t do it?”

“Not a big enough source. Too many shadows,” Carmilla said, the _click_ shattering their easy report. Danny started, tensing a little. “It’s okay, it won’t bite,” Carmilla chuckled.

“Unless I ask it to?”

“Check out your hip, Gingersnap,” Carmilla grinned.

Danny tugged the strap of her cotton bottoms over her side and saw the faint, circular indentations of a mouth buried in skin. An exhaled laugh she couldn’t keep in check burst from her throat; she threw Carmilla a warning look and fisted her hands at her hips, mock-angry.

“Like that, do you Xena?”

“You’d have just as many if it weren’t for the whole, ‘super-fast healing’ thing,” Danny shot back. “I’ll put the amulet on and it’ll go away.”

“But you wear it so well,” Carmilla replied, scooting towards the end of the table and sliding Danny’s prepared tray down so she could get in position. She propped her hip on the table top and sat, heedless of dinner beside her thigh.

“Watch the cider!”

“Danny, look at me.”

“I am, and you’re about to make a mess—”

“Danny,” Carmilla repeated measuredly, imploringly. “ _Look_ at me.”

Danny turned her distracted stare from the food back to Carmilla, who’d let the sheet at her chest drop and pool at her waist, parching Danny’s throat, drying her out like a sponge sopping up every remaining bit of moisture.

Danny registered a _click_ , but didn’t care a bit.

“Carmilla—” Danny started, taking a step towards her.

Carmilla clicked again, the shutter closing and opening quicker than a blink.

“Just what exactly are you trying to capture?” Danny asked, looming over her as Carmilla rotated the lens and clicked a final time, leaning back just slightly to catch Danny in frame.

“I should think that would be perfectly apparent,” Carmilla replied, unlooping the camera strap from her neck to set the piece aside. She spread her legs and grabbed Danny by the unbuttoned pieces of her flannel and tugged her closer, clung to her like lichens against tree bark, hugged her so tightly she’d have no way of escaping, even if she’d wanted to.

“Come down here,” Carmilla mumbled into her skin, pulling back to point expectantly at her lips.

“Maybe you should come up here,” Danny said playfully.

“Hmm,” Carmilla managed, gathering up the layered sheet at her waist and placing her bare, marble white feet on the bench at the dining table. She rose, languorous and sly, reaching about a foot higher than Danny at her full extension.

“So this is what that feels like,” Danny said, reaching out to tunnel through the convoluted twist of sheets, digging a knuckle into Carmilla’s abdomen.

“Watch it, Xena,” Carmilla chided, running her fingers through Danny’s hair.

“Or what?”

“Or you just might not get _your_ Christmas present.”

“What’s my Christmas present?” Danny dared to ask.

Carmilla grabbed her hair and pulled back so that Danny had to look straight up, as if she were surveying a sheer cliff face no one had ever climbed before. Carmilla bore down into her, the fingernails of her free hand latching painlessly on her shoulder.

Carmilla kissed her hard and long, pulling her close enough to wrap a dexterous leg around her torso. Danny took the hint, lifting Carmilla and absconding from the kitchen for the couch, tongue working overtime as she felt Carmilla settle against her abdomen, secure and safe.

“Round two,” Carmilla mumbled, as she nudged so that Danny sat on the couch, Carmilla undulating lecherously above her. She slid her legs on either side of Danny’s waist and started kissing her way down Danny’s body, flipping back the edges of Danny’s shirt to attack her torso. Before Danny could rightly register what was going on, Carmilla was on her knees and her hands were curled possessively around Danny’s calves.

“Mmmm, Merry Christmas, Gingersnap.”

 

* * *

 

 

“What’s happening now?” Danny asked, popping a piece of cheese in her mouth. She took another sip of cider and swallowed, then passed a mini-sandwich of cracker, cheese, sausage and olive to Carmilla’s open hand.

“The toy soldiers are battling with the Rat King and the mice,” Carmilla said. “Listen… crescendo… _there_ ,” she indicated, tapping at the air like a conductor with a baton.

After round two, Danny really was hungry. When she moved the platter from the dining room to the coffee table by the tree and the fireplace, the carols on the radio switched to Tchaikovsky’s _Nutcracker,_ which Carmilla had apparently seen performed during its opening season.

Because of course she had.

They’d been sitting on the floor of the cottage, nibbling and cider sipping, while Carmilla narrated the ballet for Danny. The fire was blazing in front of them and the tree was twinkling beside them. Night fell, dark as ocean depths, clouds blocking out moon and starlight. But they were content; warm and sated and downright _merry_ , Carmilla situated between Danny’s spread legs, a fluffy blanket draped over both their lower halves. They passed drinks back and forth and traded kisses over shoulders and sighed, reveling in their easy holiday idyll.

“It was poorly received when it first premiered in St. Petersburg,” Carmilla said. “Antonietta had to fight the critics a bit.”

“Anton who?”

“Antonietta Dell-Era. An Italian import to the Russian stage. She was the very first Sugar Plum fairy, a prima ballerina,” Carmilla explained, tracing the curve of Danny’s kneecap with her index finger. “Very accomplished, but young when she performed. The Russians weren’t known for their leniency in many affairs, especially in the ballet.”

“But you were able to see multiple performances by her?” Danny asked, intrigued.

“Oh, yes,” Carmilla smirked, chomping on another piece of cheese. “She was very flexible.”

“Was she now?” Danny’s eyebrows shot upward.

“I don’t kiss and tell,” Carmilla replied deviously, wiping crumbs off the corner of her mouth with her thumb.

“Good, I don’t wanna hear it,” Danny said, turning Carmilla’s chin to deliver a peck on her cheek. “Unless you’d like to talk about kissing me, not other women.”

“Now who’s the jealous one?” Carmilla snuggled back into Danny’s hold, nuzzling contentedly at her throat.

They listened to the end of the act, all the way through the dance of the Russian _Snegurochka_ —Snow Queen, Carmilla said, but Danny had dozed off. When she woke later it was to the dance of the flutes, Carmilla gently stroking her forearm, playing with her blistered, misshapen fingers. She fisted her hand against Carmilla’s touches, a little embarrassed by all the ridges and hangnails and built-up calluses she’d acquired over her years in the wood shop. Carmilla’s hands were soft as down; like she’d never handled anything remotely rough in her centuries.

“No, don’t,” Carmilla chided, bringing Danny’s fist against her lips. “I like your hands.”

“They’re gross.”

“Hhhmmm, I was going to say _exceptionally skilled_ ,” Carmilla winked.

“Yours are pretty,” Danny studied Carmilla’s tapered fingers. “They’re dainty and tiny and smooth. Like some fancy lady.”

“Well, what did you expect?” Carmilla asked, rotating in Danny’s lap to face her.

Danny stretched Carmilla’s fingers and placed them up against her own palm, awed at the discrepancy. They looked like two separate species.

“I was— _am_ , a Countess, you know,” Carmilla said, taking both Danny’s hands and spreading her fingers, entwining the digits. “That’s why. If I’d been lowborn, I’d have scratches and calluses just like yours; only I’d never be able to get rid of them. A strange stasis to the immortality thing.”

“That explains why you’re so snobby,” Danny scoffed. “You’re not used to mucking around with us ‘lowborn’.”

“There are more important things than knowing famous ballerinas and composers by name. Creating, what you do to live…” Carmilla extended Danny’s index finger, then her middle, her ring, her pinky, placed light little kisses against the pads of each. “… I can’t have as anything other than hobby. You get to be so proud of your work, and you’ve got the skin to show it.”

“Just because I can swing a hammer and strum a string and saw a board doesn’t mean my hands are any better than yours,” Danny countered, tucking Carmilla’s hair behind her ear.

“You play?”

“Guitar, yeah,” Danny answered, reaching for her glass. “Not very well, it’s been ages.”

“Play for me.”

“What?” Danny sputtered over her cider. “No.”

“There’s a guitar in the corner. Come on, Gingersnap. One more Christmas present,” Carmilla straddled one of Danny’s thighs, started kissing her neck to force her hand. “If you play me a song, I’ll do that thing—”

“Alright, alright,” Danny muttered, shoving Carmilla off, a bundle of limbs and greedy extremities. “No need to verbalize it. Or do it. I’ll just play something.”

“You’re terribly prudish for being as good in bed as you are,” Carmilla teased, propping her elbow on the edge of the couch, her chin on her hand. “I like making you blush.”

“Yeah, well, you’re terribly explicit for being as ancient as you are,” Danny said, pulling the guitar from its case. “Aren’t old ladies supposed to be fussy and prim and conservative?”

“If I see any old ladies, I’ll ask them,” Carmilla snapped.

Danny grinned evilly, sneaking back around to her spot by the fire. She sat on the couch and propped the acoustic instrument on her knee. Danny gave the guitar a strum and winced, the tuning of the strings way off, even to her imperfectly pitched ears.

“Hold on, this will take a sec,” Danny muttered, plucking the E string until it sounded relatively correct. “I’m just going to tune it to the bottom string, since I don’t have a referent.”

“It’s too low for an E,” Carmilla said.

“Do you have perfect pitch?”

Carmilla poured herself another glass of cider.

“I have a master’s degree from a German music conservatory. It’s pretty close to perfect.”

Danny strummed again after tightening the string.

“As if I didn’t feel wildly inferior enough—”

“Just tune to A,” Carmilla commanded, smiling over the lip of her glass.

As Danny strummed and hummed, Carmilla rose to turn the radio off. Danny picked expertly over an unfamiliar instrument; she was a little rusty, hadn’t really gotten her guitar out ever since the restorations started taking off during the last year. But if Carmilla was a fan, it could incentivize her to practice a bit more.

“What do you want to hear?” Danny asked, plucking over the tanned plane of acoustic construction. It really was a nice instrument, probably much more expensive than the one stored in her closet back in the city. It reverberated deeply, vibrated against her torso, as if the guitar itself were humming its own melody and shoveling it into her chest cavity.

“Something… I don’t know. Not ‘Rudolph.’ Slower. I feel…” Carmilla trailed off and plopped in front of the fire. She placed her hands over her abdomen, then commenced a staring contest with the ceiling. “Nothing too Christmasy. I’m being—overly sentimental enough as it is.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Danny said, strumming in different keys until she settled upon a modern tune. More melancholy perhaps, than traditional Christmas fare, but it seemed just right for Carmilla. Her lengthy strums shortened to a choppier rhythm, her fingers returning to the frets on the guitar neck as if they’d never left. Even her calluses ached pleasantly.

“Bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum—This is my winter song to you,” Danny sang, occasionally off-key but well enough, the cider and the fire and the night and the woman casting their Christmas spell over her chant. The bridge came all too quickly with the changing of the keys, and Danny wondered, fleetingly, how appropriate the song was given their “special” circumstances:

“Is love alive? Is love alive? Is love alive?”

She was prepared to stop, too insecure to go on, until Carmilla picked up lyrics of the second verse. Danny played and watched Carmilla flat on her back, singing, her diaphragm jittering underneath the sweater she’d thrown on for Danny’s sake. The fire crackled and skittered behind her, accompanying her voice until Danny joined back in on the chorus and Carmilla jumped to the higher harmony.

They shouldn’t sound so good together. They shouldn’t be so good together. They shouldn’t act, work, love so good together. Danny’s voice cracked when she sang about harvesting the good things, and promising fresh beginnings that Carmilla said could never be. A tear leaked from the crease of Carmilla’s almond eye, and Danny saw the reflecting flames dancing in the droplet even as she played. She let Carmilla finish out, until her voice broke, too, from the tears, and neither one of them could keep going anymore.

Danny set the guitar aside and clambered down to Carmilla on the floor, apologizing, brushing, kissing, whispering her tears away.

“It’s alright, Gingersnap,” Carmilla said, turning away from Danny to face the force of the fire. “Vampires don’t cry.”

Danny pulled Carmilla back into her arms, the song haunting and jeering in her skull.

“Yeah, and little old mortal me—” Danny whispered, suddenly understanding the futility of it all. “—I can save you.”

Danny felt Carmilla exhale a sad chuckle, little more than a tired breath.

“Don’t be sad.”

“That is a perpetual state for me,” Carmilla murmured. “Sadness isn’t a bad thing.”

“I know, I just… don’t be sad because of me,” Danny said, kissing the nape of Carmilla’s neck. “You can’t be sad on Christmas. It’s a rule.”

“Whose rule?”

“Mine,” Danny breathed. “And you’re my Christmas this year. I won’t have a sad one.”

Carmilla nodded softly, but Danny was unconvinced.

“Hey,” Danny shook Carmilla’s shoulder until the woman rolled over.

“I’ve, uhm… I’ve got this thing,” Danny began poorly, trembling a little in her nervousness. “And I get it, I do, that you can’t promise any more than hour-by-hour at this point. But I have this dinner tomorrow. Fancy party. There’s, uh, dancing and champagne, and all that high-class stuff you’d probably enjoy. I mean, you’ve been to the Russian ballet and you’ve got a degree from a conservatory, it’s nothing compared to what you’re used to—”

Carmilla surged upward and kissed her quiet, pressing against Danny’s shoulder so that they were both sitting up.

“What about the dinner?” Carmilla asked.

“I’m getting an award,” Danny mumbled, eyes shut, lips pursed, eager for more.

Carmilla took a finger and pulled the flap of her eyelid open, waiting, trademark smirk in place, for Danny’s explanation.

“From the historical society,” Danny explained.

She blamed the heat in her face on the fire, not Carmilla’s impish expression, a little awed and a lot egotistical.

“You don’t mean the Austrian Historical Society?” Carmilla asked. “Funded by a national endowment created solely for the preservation of recognized works of historical, artistic and architectural significance?”

“Uh… yes?”

“Danny, what did you _do_?” Carmilla asked, wide-eyed and impressed, clinging to Danny’s shirt lovingly.

“My crew did some refurbishing on a big church in Vienna. Then they asked us to take a look at a museum in Salzburg. And I’ve been opening up residential space that’s been off the market for years in the historical district because of the, well… hauntedness of the places. And when you do a good job and make it look like the original structure the historical people really appreciate that, I guess.”

“Well congratulations, CinnaStick,” Carmilla chirped.

“It’ll be good for business,” Danny shrugged. “I’m supposed to relay my thanks, not really a speech or anything. But, uh, I get to wear a dress; get out of these flannels and paint stained t-shirts for a night. I can bring—I mean, would you like to come with me? Christmas Eve dinner and maybe a dance, if I get drunk enough?”

“I hope dancing doesn’t drive you to drink, Gingersnap.”

“More the other way around,” Danny mumbled.

“That sounds nice,” Carmilla answered, searching Danny’s expression. “I’ll go tomorrow night.”

“We can stop over in a town tomorrow, get you a dress if—”

“Your younger sister is extremely intuitive,” Carmilla said. “There’s dresses waiting back in the loft. She brought them over last night.”

“I bet she’s winning a bet with Laf somewhere,” Danny smiled, catching movement out of the corner of her eye. “Hey, look!” Danny directed, rising and walking for the front door.

“What?”

“It’s snowing, come on.”

Danny grabbed the blanket and bundled up, wrestled with a pair of pants and stuck on two boots over sockless feet. She traipsed out the front door, crunching through the sparkling layer of snow.

“Gingersnap,” Carmilla grumbled from the doorway, wrapped up in a coat with her hands tucked round her chest. “It’s colder than the _Snegurochka’s_ cleavage out here.”

“Shhh,” Danny said, kicking at the compacted flurries, allowing the night to dust her ears and baby hairs and nose and freckles with frozen white. “I love this.”

Danny twirled about, giddy and a little cider-tipsy, starting when Carmilla popped up beneath her arms.

“If we’re going to do this, you’re going to hold me,” Carmilla mumbled querulously.

“It’s beautiful,” Danny said, opening the blanket and enveloping Carmilla, wondering how complicated it would be to get some sort of pouch installed for ease of snuggling. Like an oversized marsupial accessory. Snow floated and Carmilla huffed and Danny smiled so hard her face nearly cracked. For all her happiness, she couldn’t help but feel that the pair of them were dancing on glass.

“It’s _uncomfortable_.”

“I love this,” Danny said, rocking Carmilla side to side in her arms, peering out at the illuminated mountains and their murky reflections over the lake. The front yard was covered in snow, inch upon inch of crystalline miracles piling as they swayed, chilled and exhilarated, falling a little in love.

“I love this,” Danny repeated, placing a kiss at Carmilla’s temple.

“Hhmm,” Carmilla nodded, looking up at a sky of snowfall confetti. “I love this, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This behemoth of a chapter is rated capital F, for FLUFFY AF. 
> 
> Guys, hate to tell yall, but uni starts back this week and my attention will be divided. The updates will come, I swear, though not as consistently as I had them up in December. My apologies, but thanks for sticking with me. Hold out just a little longer, I think it'll be worth it. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the mush that was this Christmas fairytale chapter. I'd planned to write an entire chapter of them getting lost in the forest on the Hallstatt mountain and stumbling upon a coven of pagan witches, calling upon the spirits and slaughtering animals in celebration of the Germanic Wild Hunt. Alas, the time did not allow. But if you enjoyed the fluffiness, you can always let me know if you want :D


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